INDIAN   PROBLEMS 
N9  3 


BACKWARDS  OR  FORWARDS 


i 


COLONEL  H,B,  HAi 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


•  ' 


Backwards  or  Forwards  ? 


I 


<CA_ 


TO   APPEAR   SHORTLY 
The  First  Volume  of  the 

HISTORY    OF    THE    LAST 
AFGHAN    WAR 

By  Colonel  H.  B.  HANNA 


INDIAN    PROBLEMS 
NO.  Ill 


Backwards  or  Forwards  ? 


BY 

COLONEL    H.   B.     HANNA 

FORMERLY   BELONGING   TO   THE    PUNJAUB    FRONTIER 

FORCE   AND    LATE  COMMANDING    AT    DELHI 

AUTHOR     OF     "CAN     RUSSIA     INVADE 

INDIA?"  AND  "INDIA'S  SCIENTIFIC 

FRONTIER  "■ 


1  As  to  holding  Afghanistan,  it  would  be  folly  equalling  that  of  the  attempt  to 

conquer  it." — Sir  Charles  Napier. 

"  Triumph  you  may  ;  confident  you  may  be,  as  I  am,  in  the  gallantry  of  your 

troops  ;  but  when  through  your  gallantries  the  victory  has  been  gained, 

and  you  have  succeeded,  then  will  come  your  difficulties." — The 

Duke  of  Wellington  on   The  Invasion  of  Afghanistan 


MAP  Military  and  Commercial  Railways  on  the  North-West 
Frontier  at  end  of  volume 


WESTMINSTER 

ARCHIBALD   CONSTABLE  AND   COMPANY 

2  WHITEHALL  GARDENS   S.W 

And  at  all  Booksellers 


BlJTLBR  &  TaNNRR, 

Tub  Sklwood  Printing  Works» 
Fromk,  and  London. 


CONTENTS 

*  PAGE 

^    Preface vii 

CHAPTER   I 

— -    Frontier  Fortifications 1 

t 

CHAPTER   II 
Military  Railways 17 


CHAPTER   III 

Cost  of  the  Forward  Policy   .        .        .        -41 

CHAPTER   IV 

Russia's  Position  in  Central  Asia  .         .        .80 

CHAPTER  V 
The  Alternatives iog 


30S615S 


"  There  will  be  no  Russian  invasion  of  India.  .  .  .  Russia  has  long  under- 
stood both  our  strength  and  our  weakness.  There  will  be  no  foolish  raid  as  long 
as  India  is  united  in  tranquillity  and  contentment  under  British  rule.  Russia 
well  knows  that  such  an  attempt  would  only  end  in  the  entire  destruction  of  the 
invaders.  .  .  .  The  danger  then  is  imaginary.  Herat  is  no  more  the  key  to 
India  than  is  Tabreez,  or  Khiva,  or  Kokand,  or  Meshed.  .  .  .  No,  the  dream 
is  idle :  England's  dangers  are  in  India,  not  without ;  and  we  trust  that  it  will  be 
in  India  they  will  be  met,  and  that  there  will  be  no  third  Afghan  campaign. 
Such  a  move  would  be  playing  Russia's  game.  We  are  safe  while  we  hold  our 
ground  and  do  our  duty  "  Sir  Henry  Lawrence,  in  1856 

"  So  far  as  the  invasion  of  India  in  that  quarter,  it  is  the  opinion  of  Her 
Majesty's  Government  that  it  is  hardly  practicable.  The  base  of  operations  of 
any  possible  foe  is  so  remote,  the  communications  are  so  difficult,  the  aspect  of 
the  country  so  forbidding,  that  we  have  long  arrived  at  the  opinion  that  an  in- 
vasion of  our  Empire,  by  passing  the  mountains  which  form  our  North-West 
frontier,  is  one  which  we  need  not  dread  " 

Lord  Beaconsfield,  Speech  on  Lord  Mayor's  Day,  1878 


PREFACE 

In  the  eighteen  months  which  have  elapsed  since 
the  first  of  my  Indian  Problems — Can  Russia  In- 
vade India  f — saw  the  light,  a  marked  change  has 
come  over  the  tone  of  many  English  newspapers, 
even  those  which  still  cling  to  the  Forward  Policy, 
seeming  anxious  to  clear  themselves  of  all  sus- 
picion of  belief  in  the  possibility  of  a  Russian 
Invasion  of  India.  I  will  not  inquire  how  much 
of  this  change  is  due  to  the  persistency  with  which 
I  have  striven  to  drive  the  geographical,  climatic, 
transport,  and  commissariat  facts  that  rule  the 
military  situation  in  Central  Asia,  both  for  Russia 
and  for  ourselves,  into  the  mind  of  the  British 
Public,  but  simply  hail  it  as  the  first  step  towards 
the  acceptance  of  the  views  which  find  their  final 
expression  in  the  present  volume. 

Since  the  publication  of  my  second  Indian 
Problem — India's  Scientific  Frontier :  Where  Is 
It  ?  What  Is  It  ? — a  change  of  even  greater  imme- 


viii  PREFACE 

diate  importance  must  have  passed  over  the  views 
of  the  Military  Authorities  in  India ;  for,  unless 
the  newspapers  of  that  country  are  strangely  mis- 
informed, they  have  opened  their  eyes  to  the 
weakness  of  their  dispositions  in  the  vast  regions 
lying  between  India's  natural  and  political  fron- 
tiers— that  weakness  which  I  had  exposed  and 
denounced — and  are  trying  to  remedy  it  by  draw- 
ing in  their  scattered  troops,  and  handing  over  a 
number  of  outlying  posts  to  the  care  of  tribal 
levies.  They  have  only  to  persist  in  this  reason- 
able course  to  find  themselves,  at  last,  without 
any  violent  catastrophe,  any  humiliating  yielding 
to  compulsion,  safe  once  more  within  the  invul- 
nerable frontier,  to  which  in  the  following  pages 
I  have  invited  them  to  return. 

Throughout  the  entire  work  of  which  this 
volume  is  the  concluding  instalment,  I  have 
spoken  of  Russia  as  of  a  foe.  My  argument  re- 
quired that  I  should  take  this  view  of  her ;  it  is 
the  true  view,  so  long  as  we  hold  to  a  policy 
which  compels  her  to  see  an  enemy  in  ourselves. 
But  once  erase  India  from  the  list  of  subjects  over 
which  we  may  some  day  quarrel,  once  convince 
her  that  we  have  learnt  to  view  the  expansion  of 


PREFACE  ix 

her  power  in  Central  Asia  without  jealousy  and 
without  fear,  and  the  ground  will  be  cleared  for 
the  establishment  of  a  better  understanding  be- 
tween her  and  ourselves  ;  and  certainly  I  count 
the  opportunity  of  approaching  all  points  of  dif- 
ference that  exist,  or  may  arise  between  us,  in  a 
calmer  and  more  generous  spirit  than  is  possible 
to-day,  as  not  the  least  of  the  gains  to  be  put  to 
the  credit  of  both  nations,  when  the  Forward 
Policy  has  finally  been  abandoned  on  each  side 

of  the  Hindu  Kush. 

H.  B.  HANNA. 

October  xoth,  1896. 
Junior  Army  and  Navy  Club, 
St.  James's  Street,  S.W. 

P.S.  —  While  these  pages  have  been  going 
through  the  press,  events  have  been  happening 
which  enforce  their  arguments  and  point  their 
moral.  On  the  one  hand,  we  have  in  India  a 
widespread  scarcity  which  may  develop  into  a 
famine  greater  than  that  of  1876-77  ;  on  the  other 
hand,  the  raids  of  the  Maris  on  the  Bolan  Rail- 
way. 

The  Indian  Government  is  taking  credit  to  it- 
self for  its  readiness  to  meet  the  distress,  and 
British  newspapers  are  congratulating  India  upon 


x  PREFACE 

the  irrigation  works,  which  have  lessened  the  area 
within  which  her  crops  are  at  the  mercy  of  a  rain- 
less season,  and  upon  the  railways,  which  enable 
the  surplus  products  of  one  district  to  be  rapidly 
transferred  to  another ;  but  how  much  greater 
cause  there  might  have  been  for  gratulation  and 
self-gratulation  if  the  millions  which  have  been 
spent  upon  military  lines  running  through  unin- 
habited wastes,  and  on  fortifications  which  defend 
nothing  except  the  troops  that  they  enclose,  had 
gone  in  the  multiplication  of  irrigation  canals  and 
commercial  railways,  and  the  improvement  of 
country  roads  ! 

When  the  Central  Government  of  India  con- 
fessed that  its  demands  upon  the  exchequers  of 
the  Provincial  Governments  had  deprived  the  latter 
of  the  power  to  develop  the  vast  territories  under 
their  charge,  it  was  mainly  works  which  help  to 
prevent  famine  that  it  had  in  its  mind  ;  and  its 
own  confiscation  of  Rs.  70,000,000  of  the  fund  set 
apart  for  this  specific  purpose  has  contributed  to 
intensify  the  misery  which  it  will  now  have  to 
mitigate  at  an  enormous  cost,  and  with  no  per- 
ceptible profit  to  the  State,  for  relief  works 
are,  proverbially,  wasteful  and  useless. 


PREFACE  xi 

As  for  the  murder  of  workmen  and  officials 
on  the  Bolan  Railways,  such  incidents — common 
enough,  if  the  truth  were  known — are  the  natural 
fruit  of  the  military  position,  for  which  we  have 
to  thank  the  Forward  School  of  politicians. 

Shut  up  in  scattered  forts,  in  the  midst  of  a 
population  Afghan  enough  to  dislike  us  the  more, 
the  more  they  see  of  us,1  the  so-called  garrison 
of  Beluchistan  is  little  better  than  an  imprisoned 
force,  each  unit  of  which  is  barely  strong  enough 
for  its  own  defence,  whilst  its  whole  strength  and 
influence,  confessedly  inadequate  for  the  protec- 
tion of  travellers,  prove  to  be  also  unequal  to  the 
duty  of  guaranteeing  the  lives  of  the  civil  popula- 
tion engaged  in  the  arduous  task  of  keeping  open 
its  communications  with  India. 

1  "  It  may  not  be  very  flattering  to  our  amour  firopre,  but 
I  feel  sure  I  am  right  when  I  say,  that  the  less  the  Afghans 
see  of  us,  the  less  they  will  dislike  us."— Sir  Frederick  {now 
Lord)  Roberts'  Memorandum,  dated  Kabul,  29th  May,  1880. 


BACKWARDS  OR  FORWARDS? 

CHAPTER   I 

FRONTIER   FORTIFICATIONS 

"  Fortresses  so  much  in  advance  of  the  main  territories 
and  strength  of  a  country,  add  neither  to  the  offensive  nor 
defensive  powers  of  a  state,  but  compromise  a  certain 
portion  of  its  strength  in  men  and  means  by  isolating  them 
at  vast  distances  from  support  in  the  midst  of  a  hostile 
country."  —  General  Sir  Henry  Durand,  Royal 
Engineers. 

"  A  large  fort  requires  a  large  number  of  men  to  defend 
it,  who  are  generally  much  better  employed  in  fighting  the 
enemy  in  the  open  ;  and  there  is  an  instinctive  feeling  that 
if  ever  we  have  to  shut  up  our  armies  in  forts  it  will  be  time 
for  us  to  walk  out  of  India." — General  H.  B.  Medley, 
Royal  Engineers. 

"  We  find  that  fortification  has  been  sometimes  regarded 
as  an  end  instead  of  a  mere  means,  that  it  has  been  per- 
mitted to  impose  conditions  upon  strategy  and  tactics,  in- 
stead of  being  made  absolutely  subservient  to  both,  and 
that  a  remedy  for  defective  organization,  generalship,  train- 
ing or  moral  has  been  sought  in  its  employment." — Lieu- 
TENANT-Colonel  Sir  G.  S.  CLARKE,  Royal  Engineers. 

In  the  first  of  my  Indian  Problems^-  I  showed  by 
facts  and  figures,   which  have  been    ridiculed  in- 
1  Can  Russia  Invade  India  ? 
B.F.  B 


2  FRONTIER   FORTIFICATIONS 

deed,  but  not  refuted,  that  a  Russian  invasion  of 
India  is  an  impossibility  ;  in  the  second,1  that  that 
country's  present  North- West  Frontier  is  strategic- 
ally and  politically  unsound  ;  in  the  third,  I  now 
propose  to  lay  before  my  readers  a  statement  of 
the  price  which  India  has  had  to  pay  for  impaired 
security,  and  a  forecast  of  the  ultimate  cost  to 
England  of  the  policy  to  which  she  gives  a  care- 
less and  ignorant  support. 

To  arrive  at  that  price,  and  to  estimate  that 
cost,  however,  many  factors  which  I  have  hitherto 
neglected  must  be  taken  into  account,  chief 
among  them  being  the  great  defensive  works 
which  have  been  undertaken  since  Lord  Lytton 
abandoned  England's  "  settled  policy "  towards 
Afghanistan,  and  the  military  railways  within  our 
old  frontier,  but  called  into  existence  by  the 
exigencies  of  our  new  one,  each  of  which  factors  is 
important  enough  to  require  a  chapter  to  itself. 

"  Nature,"  so  the  late   Sir   George  Chesney  told 

the  Aldershot  Military  Society,  "  has  done  a  great 

deal,   and    nearly   closed    the    frontier,  but    where 

there  are  passes  and  gorges  through  the  mountains, 

1  India's  Scientific  Frontier :   Where  is  it?     What  is  it ? 


FRONTIER    FORTIFICATIONS  3 

there  field-works  have  been  constructed  for  the 
purpose  of  closing  the  frontier  and  strengthening 
the  defences  of  the  important  garrison  and  arsenal 
of  Ravval  Pindi,  further  in  the  rear." 

It  would  appear  from  the  context  that  the  field- 
works  of  which  Chesney  speaks  in  this  passage 
were  not  the  long  line  of  fortified  posts  within 
our  old  frontier,  which  really  do  close  every  pas- 
sage into  India,  but  the  forts  far  in  advance  of 
that  frontier,  in  virtue  of  which  we,  indeed, 
occupy  the  so-called  province  of  Beluchistan, 
but  which  are  far  too  weak  and  isolated  to 
offer  any  resistance  to  the  advance  of  a  Russian 
army,  such  as  he  must  have  had  in  his  mind 
when  he  attributed  to  them  the  office  of  strength- 
ening the  great  works  of  Rawal  Pindi.  The 
only  fortress  outside  our  old  frontier  which  really 
blocks  a  pass  leading  into  India  is  Quetta,  and 
that,  thanks    to    our    mania  for  road-making,1  it 

1  "  Beside  the  railway,  numerous  military  roads  were 
constructed  north  and  east  of  Quetta,  and  the  great  Imperial 
line  of  communication  between  Quetta  and  Dera  Ghazi  Khan 
by  the  Bori  Valley,  was  finally  completed  and  bridged  in 
1890-91.  Considerable  progress  was  also  made  with  another 
Imperial  line,  connecting  Loralai  with  the  Zhob  Valley,  and 
the  Zhob  Valley  with  the  Gomal  Pass  and  the  Punjab  ;  and 


4  FRONTIER   FORTIFICATIONS 

would  now  be  comparatively  easy  to  mask  and 
turn.  Against  the  vast  host  of  invaders,  which  Sir 
Charles  Macgregor  and  other  illustrious  members 
of  the  Forward  Party  saw  in  their  dreams,  it 
would  serve  no  purpose  except  to  give  shelter  to 
an  Anglo-Indian  Army  Corps,  and  keep  it  safe 
out  of  the  field  ;  whilst,  viewed  in  relation  to  the 
small  force  which  alone  could  hope  to  make  its 
way  from  the  Caspian  to  the  borders  of  India,  its 
proportions  and  armament  are  simply  ridiculous  ; 
for  what  other  epithet  can  be  applied  to  works  of 
which  it  can  be  truly  said,  that  "  here  science  has 
brought  to  bear  every  infernal  machine  in  the 
shape  of  batteries  at  short  intervals,  out-works 
and  breast-works,  ranged  one  behind  the  other, 
and  quick-firing  guns  posted  on  the  adjoining 
heights," 1  whilst  all  the  time,  strain  one's  men- 
tal vision  as  one  may,  it  is  impossible  to  discover 
any  more  terrible  enemy  to   be  the  victim  of  all 

roads  were  made  between  the  Harnai  railway  station  and 
Loralai,  through  the  Mahrab  Tangi,  one  of  the  grandest 
passes  in  Beluchistan,  and  between  Harnai  and  Quetta. 
Altogether,  at  the  end  of  1891,  there  were  in  Beluchistan 
1,520  miles  of  road,  of  which  376  miles  were  bridged  and 
metalled." — Dr.  Thornton's  Life  of  Sir  Robert  Sandeman. 
1  Sir  John  Dickson-Poynder. 


FRONTIER   FORTIFICATIONS  5 

this  strength  than  the  hill-tribes,  to  check  whose 
inroads  on  our  old  frontier  a  score  or  so  of  mud 
forts  and  a  few  hundred  Native  Cavalry  used  to 
be  found  sufficient,  since  the  small  Russian  force 
which  nature  might  permit  to  traverse  Afghan- 
istan, is  never  likely  to  appear  on  the  scene  ? 

It  is  Rawal  Pindi,  however,  not  Quetta,  in 
which  Chesney  seems  to  have  discovered  the 
real  bulwark  of  India  ;  and  the  fortifications  of 
Rawal  Pindi  have  a  curious  history,  which  de- 
serves to  be  widely  known. 

Those  fortifications,  begun  in  the  early  days 
of  Lord  Lytton's  vice-royalty,  were  originally 
intended  to  consist  simply  of  an  arsenal,  pro- 
tected by  earthworks.  When  arsenal  and  earth- 
works were  half  completed,  some  one  made  the 
discovery  that  both  were  commanded  by  the 
adjacent  heights !  The  site  was  an  impossible 
one  for  its  purpose,  but  to  confess  this  by  aban- 
doning it,  and  seeking  a  better  elsewhere,  would 
have  brought  such  disgrace  on  all  the  Indian 
authorities,  that  Lord  Lytton's  Government  did 
not  dare  to  face  it,  and  sought  to  conceal  its 
blunder  by  turning  a  modest,  useful  work  into  a 
huge,    useless    quadrilateral  ;   which,   like    Quetta, 


6  FRONTIER   FORTIFICATIONS 

would  require  an  army  corps  for  its  defence 
against  a  really  formidable  foe,  and  whose  size 
and  strength  are  absurd  against  any  enemy  less 
than  formidable. 

And  yet,  huge  as  they  are,  the  fortifications 
of  Rawal  Pindi  are  incomplete,  and  likely  to  re- 
main so,  since  we  learn  from  Sir  Henry  Bracken- 
bury's  contribution  to  the  latest  Financial  State- 
ment, that,  all  the  necessary  forts  having  now 
been  erected,  "  it  has  been  decided  to  postpone  the 
construction  of  the  intermediate  batteries,  as  these 
could  comparatively  rapidly  be  made,  and,  in  view 
of  the  great  progress  of  modern  military  science,  it 
is  thought  that  the  armament  should  not  yet  be 
procured."  Lack  of  funds  is  probably  the  true 
explanation  of  this  patient  waiting  upon  modern 
science  for  the  armament  of  works  which  Sir 
George  Chesney  pronounced  to  be  "  of  extra- 
ordinary value"  ;  but  it  is  difficult  not  to  suspect, 
from  the  tone  of  Sir  H.  Brackenbury's  allusion 
to  the    completed  forts,1    that    he    is    as   little  en- 

1  "  A  series  of  forts  have  been  completed  at  Rawal  Pindi, 
forming  a  strong  entrenched  position.  These  forts  required 
a  long  time  for  construction,  and  the  Government  of  India 
thought  it  well  that  they  should  be  made."  —  See  Indian 
Financial  Statement  for  1 896-97. 


FRONTIER  FORTIFICATIONS  7 

amoured  of  what  General  H.  B.  Medley  once 
styled  the  "  haphazard "  fortifications  of  Rawal 
Findi,  as   I  am. 

But,  complete  or  incomplete,  armed  or  un- 
armed, the  works  of  Rawal  Pindi  are  only 
second  in  extent  and  costliness  to  those  of 
Ouetta,  and  we  are  justified  in  asking — Has  the 
Indian  Government  any  clear  conception  of 
what  it  will  do  with  them  when  a  Russian  army, 
with  Fortunatus'  cap  of  invisibility  on  its  head, 
his  invincible  sword  in  its  hand,  and,  presumably, 
his  inexhaustible  purse  in  its  knapsack,  glides 
swiftly  through  the  Afghan  passes  to  burst  in 
unexpected  flood  upon  the  plains  of  India  ? 

Everything  in  their  construction  and  in  the 
military  treasures  they  enclose,  points  to  the 
permanent  character  of  these  gigantic  works, 
yet  Sir  George  Chesney  assured  an  audience  of 
British  officers,  that  they  were  merely  "  sub- 
stitutes "  for  permanent  works,  "  constructed  not 
with  a  view  of  holding  that  place  in  force  and 
inviting  attack  there,  but  simply  as  a  precaution 
in  the  event  of  our  being  taken  by  surprise. 
.  .  .  There  is  a  danger,"  so  he  went  on, 
"  that   we   might    be   caught    napping,   that    war 


8  FRONTIER   FORTIFICATIONS 

might  find  us  not  ready,  and  that  we  might  not 
be  in  sufficient  strength  to  be  able  to  hold  our 
ground  in  the  open  until  reinforced  by  the 
necessary  troops.  In  that  case,  we  should  run 
considerable  risks  at  the  outset,  and,  therefore, 
an  entrenched  position  would  be  of  enormous 
advantage  to  us  as  a  rallying  point  before  we 
proceed  with  the  only  kind  of  war  which  we 
can  ever  think  of  carrying  on,  that  is  offensive 
warfare.  These  works  are  of  extraordinary 
value,  but  it  would  be  a  fatal  error  to  suppose 
the  object  in  their  erection  was  only  to  hold  on 
to  them.  If  ever  we  English  give  up  the  old 
policy  of  offensive  war,  we  may  say  good-bye 
to  our  Indian  Empire." 

Here  we  have  a  man,  who  for  five  years  had 
been  Military  Secretary  to  the  Indian  Government, 
and  for  yet  another  five  years,  Military  Member 
of  the  Viceroy's  Council,  confessing  that  he  ex- 
pected one  of  the  chief  factors  in  our  elaborate  and 
costly  system  of  frontier  defences  to  be  deserted 
as  soon  as  it  had  served  as  a  rallying  point 
for  our  startled  forces.  Now,  that  the  smaller 
fortified  posts,  scattered  over  tens  of  thousands 
of   square    miles  of  mountain  and   desert,  would 


FRONTIER   FORTIFICATIONS  9 

be  abandoned  the  moment  the  danger,  to  guard 
against  which  they  were  constructed,  really  pre- 
sented itself,  was  one  of  the  facts  most  condem- 
natory of  the  Forward  School's  strategy,  which 
I  pointed  out  in  India's  Scientific  Frontier ;  but 
I  never  went  so  far  as  to  suggest  that  Rawal 
Pindi,  well  within  our  old  boundary,  would  share 
the  same  fate,  or  that  all  the  vast  sums  which 
have  been  squandered  on  its  fortifications  were 
to  buy  for  us  no  greater  gain  than  a  breath- 
ing space  in  which  to  make  good  the  criminal 
ignorance  or  negligence  of  the  military  clique 
which  determines  India's  foreign  and  frontier 
policy. 

The  prospect  is  as  shameful  as  it  is  appalling  ; 
yet  I  doubt  whether  it  is  more  to  be  deprecated 
than  its  alternative  ;  for  to  cling  to  the  works 
which  have  been  so  casually  and  mischievously 
erected,  means  nothing  less  than  the  imprison- 
ment behind  their  walls  of  large  numbers  of 
troops,  whose  presence  in  the  field,  in  the  event 
either  of  invasion  or  rebellion,  still  more  in  case 
of  the  coincidence  of  the  two,  would  be  absolutely 
essential.  It  was  the  uneasy  consciousness  of 
this  necessity  which  drove  Chesney  into  attempt- 


io  FRONTIER   FORTIFICATIONS 

ing  to  divest  the  works,  for  which  he  avowed 
himself  largely  responsible,  of  their  permanent 
character. 

He  was  quite  right,  however,  in  predicting  that 
if  ever  the  Indian  Government  gave  up  taking 
the  offensive  in  war,  we  might  say  good-bye  to 
the  British  Empire  in  India,  and  this,  not  only  be- 
cause experience  has  shown  that  the  moral  effect 
of  taking  the  offensive  is  very  great  upon  Asiatics, 
but  because  any  other  course  would  cripple  us  be- 
yond what  we  could  endure.  For  consider,  it  is 
not,  as  Sir  William  Mansfield  warned  us,  as  if 
India  were  England  for  the  purpose  of  waging  war 
against  Russia  ;  we  could  not  use  every  soldier, 
Native  or  British,  within  that  great  peninsula  to 
repel  invasion,  since  the  primary  object  of  all 
our  forces  in  India — but  more  especially  of  the 
British  portion  of  them— is  to  keep  that  country 
for  us  against  the  inhabitants  of  our  own  pro- 
vinces, and  against  the  armies  of  the  Native 
States  ;  and  to  relax  our  hold  upon  the  strategical 
points  which  have  been  selected  for  this  end, 
including,  as  they  do,  arsenals,  magazines,  trea- 
suries and  bridges,  would  be  to  court  disaster  in 
one  direction  in    seeking  to  avert  it  in  another ; 


FRONTIER   FORTIFICATIONS  n 

and  yet,  if  such  fortresses  as  Rawal  Pindi  and 
Quetta  are  to  be  successfully  defended,  this  is 
exactly  what  we  shall  have  to  do.  It  may 
be  "  monstrous,"  as  Chesney  said,  "  to  think 
of  holding  these  works  for  more  than  temporary 
purposes,"  yet  having,  like  Frankenstein,  evoked 
our  monsters,  we  shall  have  to  stick  to  them, 
simply  because  we  cannot  annihilate  them  with 
a  breath,  nor  yet  run  the  risk  of  their  falling  into 
foreign  or  rebel  hands ;  and  if  we  stick  to  them, 
we  must  either  withdraw  troops  from  other  mili- 
tary stations,  or  face  our  invaders  in  the  open, 
with  forces  so  weak  as  to  make  defeat  almost  a 
foregone  conclusion.  For  if  we  lock  up  15,000  or 
20,000  men  in  Quetta,  and  another  15,000  or 
20,000  men  in  Rawal  Pindi,  and  yet  another 
15,000  or  20,000  in  the  works  which  are  to  be 
hastily  improvised  at  Multan,  Lundi  Kotal,  Jum- 
rud,  etc.,  where  is  the  army  for  service  in  the 
field  to  come  from,  unless  we  denude  other  parts 
of  India  of  their  garrisons  ?  Let  it  never  be 
forgotten  that  war  with  Russia  in  Asia  would 
mean  war  with  Russia  in  Europe,  and  very  pro- 
bably war  with  France  also  ;  and  in  face  of  such 
a  combination,  England  could  spare  no  reinforce- 


i2  FRONTIER   FORTIFICATIONS 

ments  to  India,  nor  in  a  period  of  panic  such 
as  our  alarmists  picture  to  themselves,  would  it 
be  easy  or  safe  to  add  largely  to  our  Native  army, 
or  to  draw  upon  the  forces  of  our  semi-indepen- 
dent allies,  at  a  moment  when  prudence  would 
bid  us  strengthen  the  camps  of  observation  which 
we  maintain  for  the  purpose  of  keeping  on  those 
forces  a  vigilant  eye  ? 

I  am  arguing,  of  course,  on  the  Forward 
School's  assumption  that  Russia  can  really  invade 
India,  and  in  great  force,  for  on  no  other  would 
the  overgrown  fortifications  of  Rawal  Pindi  and 
Quetta  have  a  word  to  urge  in  their  own  justi- 
fication ;  and  from  that  point  of  view,  looking 
forward,  I  behold  some  future  Government  of 
India  impaled  upon  the  horns  of  a  dilemma 
prepared  for  them  by  Lord  Lytton  and  Lord 
Roberts,  and  by  the  Secretaries  of  State,  Viceroys 
and  Military  Members  of  Council,  who  have 
helped  to  stamp  the  spirit  of  those  two  men — a 
spirit  strangely  compounded  of  nervous  over- 
caution  and  reckless  daring — upon  India's  frontier 
policy. 

I  may  be  told  that  my  prevision  is  at  fault, 
since   by  the  occupation    of  those    78,000   square 


FRONTIER   FORTIFICATIONS  13 

miles  of  territory,  to  which  I  am  so  wrong-headed 
as  to  object,  the  dilemma  in  question  has  been 
got  rid  of,  as,  arrested  at  our  distant  outposts, 
Russian  armies  would  never  appear  before  the 
walls  of  Rawal  Pindi  and  Multan,  and  men  enough 
could  be  spared  from  India  for  the  successful 
defence  of  Quetta.  But  why  then  the  fortifica- 
tions of  Rawal  Pindi  and  the  promised  fortifi- 
cations of  Multan  ?  I  am  afraid  my  friends  of 
the  Forward  Party  have  as  little  faith  in  the 
efficiency  of  their  latest  line  of  defence  as  I  in  its 
utility,  and  are  as  certain  that,  despite  Loralai 
and  Fort  Sandeman,  Wano  and  Gilgit  and 
Chitral,  yes,  despite  Quetta  itself,  those  terrible 
Russians  will  still  fight  their  way  to  the  Indus, 
as  I  am  convinced  that  with  Jacobabad  and 
Jumrud,  "  as  the  bastions  of  the  front  attack," 
they  would  never  set  eyes  on  that  river. 

From  my  point  of  view — that  of  the  invulner- 
ability of  our  pre-Lytton  frontier — the  dilemma 
can,  indeed,  never  arise  ;  yet  future  Indian  Govern- 
ments may  reap  fruit  no  less  bitter  from  the 
policy  which  has  called  Rawal  Pindi  and  Quetta 
into  being,  and  nursed  them  into  the  monsters 
they  are   to-day,    and    may  lament   in    vain   over 


i4  FRONTIER   FORTIFICATIONS 

the  tens  of  millions  of  rupees  flung  into  worse 
than  useless  permanent — or  temporary? — fortifi- 
cations ;  millions  which,  if  expended  on  repro- 
ductive works,  would  have  gone  far  to  place 
England's  empire  in  India  on  the  sure  foundations 
of  a  contented,  because  prosperous,  people. 

From  my  point  of  view,  also,  the  evil  of 
Rawal  Pindi's  haphazard  lines  begins  and  ends 
with  themselves ;  but  Ouetta  has  a  side  more 
obj'ectionable  than  the  wasteful  cost  of  its  forti- 
fications. Its  position  and  the  immense  military 
stores  collected  within  its  walls  call  loudly  for 
employment,  and  there  is  no  lack  of  restless 
and  ardent  spirits  among  our  officers  to  urge 
that  that  call  should  not  be  disregarded.  Having 
obtained  a  base  of  operations,  and  the  field  of 
operations  being  in  no  hurry  to  come  to  us,  why 
should  not  we  start  out  to  find  it  ?  Quetta,  after 
all,  is  not  the  strategically  perfect  position  that 
'  Forward  '  politicians  once  dreamed  it  was — let 
us  at  least  turn  it  to  account  as  a  stepping-stone 
to  a  better.  Kandahar  may  realize  our  ideal,  or 
Herat,  and,  at  least,  there  will  be  more  chance 
of  a  fight  with  the  Russians  if  we  move  74,  or, 
still    better,   474    miles    nearer   to   their    frontier 


FRONTIER   FORTIFICATIONS  15 

than  we  are  to-day.  What  matter  the  dangers 
that  we  leave  behind  us?  Is  not  Quetta  there 
to  ward  them  off,  or  to  keep  a  refuge  for  us  in 
case  of  disaster  ? 

Will  any  one  who  knows  much  of  military  life 
say  that  I  have  here  misrepresented  the  spirit 
which  pervades  a  large  section  of  our  junior 
officers,  and  is  not  altogether  a  stranger  to  their 
seniors  ?  or  can  I  be  accused  of  vain  prophesying 
when  I  predict  that  that  spirit,  combined  with 
opportunity — and  is  not  Quetta  a  large  and  ever- 
present  opportunity  ? — is  pretty  sure  to  land  us, 
sooner  or  later,  not  necessarily  in  war  with  Russia, 
because  she  may  wisely  keep  beyond  our  reach, 
but  with  Afghanistan,  that  state,  inoffensive  so  far 
as  we  are  concerned,  to  which  we  have  twice 
already  done  grievous  wrong  ?  That  spirit  is  no 
bad  thing  in  itself ;  I  would  not  give  much  for 
an  army  if  it  were  not  pervaded  by  love  of 
adventure,  by  contempt  for  danger,  by  the  thirst 
for  personal  distinction,  and  the  passion  for 
national  aggrandizement.  But  above  the  military 
spirit,  guiding  and  restraining  it,  should  stand 
the  higher  spirit  of  the  statesman,  which,  without 
fearing  danger,  knows  how  to  discern  it ;  which, 


16  FRONTIER   FORTIFICATIONS 

ever  ready  for  great  exertions,  when  great  exer- 
tions are  demanded  of  it,  scorns  to  waste  its 
strength  on  foolish  and  futile  adventures  ;  which 
has  risen  above  the  promptings  of  personal 
ambition,  and  has  learnt  to  distinguish  wherein 
the  real  greatness  of  a  nation  consists. 

If  that  wiser,  calmer  spirit  reigned  in  the 
councils  of  the  Indian  Government,  the  warlike 
proclivities  of  the  Anglo-Indian  army  would  be 
of  little  consequence  ;  but  unreasoning  fear  of  an 
impossible  contingency  has  made  that  Govern- 
ment, for  years  past,  the  slave  of  its  military 
advisers,  whose  unfitness  for  the  part  they  have 
usurped  is  shown  in  nothing  more  conspicuously 
than  in  the  steady  extension  of  fortifications, 
designed,  by  their  own  confession,  not  for  the 
defence  of  India,  but  as  a  refuge  for  our  troops 
when  surprised  by  a  danger,  to  discover  which, 
when  yet  afar  off,  they  have  removed  their  neigh- 
bours' landmarks  by  the  score,  and  have  estab- 
lished a  long  chain  of  posts  of  observation,  each 
more  isolated  and  cut  off  from  succour  than  the 
one  that  went  before  it. 


CHAPTER   II 

MILITARY   RAILWAYS 

"  In  India  there  is  little  or  no  publicity,  and  still  less 
extraneous  engineering  talent,  to  criticise  the  projects  emana- 
ting from  the  Public  Works  Department." — Sir  Evelyn 
Baring  (now  Lord  Cromer),  late  Financial  Member  of 
Viceroy's  Council. 

ALTHOUGH  the  Sind-Pishin  branch  of  the  North- 
Western  line  is  the  only  railway  which  has 
hitherto  been  constructed  on  the  further  side  of 
the  Indus  with  a  view  to  linking  Great  Britain's 
new  possessions  with  the  Punjab,  it  would  be  a 
gross  error  to  suppose  that  that  branch  represents 
all  the  misdirected  railway  effort  for  which  India 
has  to  thank  her  forward  school  of  politicians. 

From  the  category  of  misdirected  effort  we 
must  except  the  completion  of  the  main  line 
of  the  North-Western  Railway,  the  branch  line 
to  Jacobabad,  and  the  protected  bridges  at  Attock 
and    Sukkur,1  which,  in    giving   to  us  the   power 

1  The  Attock  bridge  is  1,655  feet  l°no>  and  m  feet  above 
B.F.  17  C 


1 8  MILITARY    RAILWAYS 

to  operate  at  will  on  either  side  of  that  great 
obstacle  the  Indus,  has  put  the  finishing  touch 
to  the  invulnerability  of  India's  natural  frontier. 

The  main  line  of  the  North-Western,  although 
classed,  and  justly  classed,  as  a  commercial 
railway,1  is  also  a  military  line  in  the  true  sense 

the  surface  of  the  river  at  low  water,  in  order  to  provide 
sufficient  water-way  for  the  great  floods.  Its  cost  was  Rs. 
3,220,516,  but  whether  with  or  without  its  defences  is  not 
clear  from  the  Government  records.  A  strong  bridge  head 
covers  the  vast  structure,  and  the  hills  on  the  right  bank  of 
the  river  are  crowned  by  forts  and  heavy  batteries.  The 
bridge  at  Sukkur  is  135  feet  shorter  than  that  at  Attock,  but 
its  cost — Rs.  3,346,720 — was  somewhat  greater.  It,  too,  is 
fitted  with  block  house  defences,  and  covered  by  outlying 
fortifications. 

1  The  net  earnings  of  commercial  railways  on  the 
standard  gauge  are,  on  every  train,  Rs.  2*09  per  mile, 
whereas  on  military  lines  of  the  same  gauge  there  is  an 
admitted  loss  of  Rs.  '4  per  train  mile  ;  in  other  words,  every 
commercial  train  that  runs  100  miles  clears  Rs.  209,  whilst 
every  military  train  is  supposed  to  cost  the  State,  on  the 
same  distance,  Rs.  40.  In  reality  the  loss  is  far  greater,  for 
the  revenue  from  military  lines,  shown  in  the  Administrative 
Report,  is  largely  a  paper  transaction.  The  gross  earnings 
of  such  railways  is  stated  to  have  been  Rs.  3,271,057  in  1895  > 
but  tliis  sum,  with  the  exception  of  a  little  revenue  obtained 
from  the  carriage  of  salt  on  the  old  Lala  Musa  line,  and 
some  Kafila  traffic  between  Sibi  and  Rukh,  is  derived  from 


MILITARY    RAILWAYS  19 

of  that  term,  since  it  unites  points  of  great 
strategical  importance,  whilst  doubling  their  com- 
munication with  England  ;  but  what  shall  I  say 
of  the  Kushalgarh  branch  of  that  railway,  or  of 
the  Sind-Sagar  line  ? 

Running  through  barren  and  sparsely-peopled 
country,  whose  only  mineral  product,  salt,  is 
confined  to  the  triangle  lying  between  Attock, 
Lala  Musa,  and  Kundian,1  useless,  therefore, 
from  a  commercial  point  of  view,  neither  of  these 
lines  has  paid,  or  ever  will  pay,  interest  on 
capital,  or  even  its  own  working  expenses.  And 
what  strategical  points  do  they  connect  ?     Rawal 

the  transport  of  troops  and  stores,  and  is  debited  to  the 
army  accounts. 

Taking  the  annual  gross  earnings  of  the  military  rail- 
ways at  Rs.  3,271,057,  and  the  working  expenses  at  Rs. 
3,807,375 — the  figures  given  in  the  latest  Administrative 
Report — and  assuming  the  Rs.  807,375  to  be  covered  by 
paying  freights,  the  deficit  for  every  military  train  which 
runs  a  hundred  miles  is  not  Rs.  40,  but  Rs.  223. 

1  The  first  45  miles  of  the  Sind-Sagar  Railway  being  only 
intended  for  the  conveyance  of  salt,  were  in  the  first  instance 
laid  down  on  metre  gauge,  but  when  Government  deter- 
mined to  convert  it  into  a  military  line  and  extend  it  to 
Kundian  and  Mahmud  Kote,  they  were  relaid  on  a  standard 
gauge. 


20  MILITARY   RAILWAYS 

Pindi  with  Kohat  ?  Let  the  unbridged  Indus  and 
empty  terminus  at  Kushalgarh  answer  that  ques- 
tion.1 Multan  with  Lahore?  That  connection 
the  main  line  of  the  North-Western  had  already 
established,  and  on  far  surer  foundations.  Dera 
Ismail  Khan  and  Dera  Ghazi  Khan  with  Attock 
and  Multan  ?  A  descriptive  and  historical  sketch 
of  the  Sind-Sagar  line  will  enable  us  to  judge 
whether  this,  the  end  which  its  authors  undoubt- 
edly had  in  view,  has  been,  or  is  likely  to  be, 
achieved. 

The  sanction  for  the  Sind-Sagar  Railway  was 
given  in  1884,  and  the  main  line — 357  miles  in 
length — seems  to  have  been  completed  in  1888  ;  at 
least,  I  can  find  no  mention  in  the  Indian  Financial 
Statements  of  any  sums  having  been  allotted  for 
its  construction  since  that  year.     This  main  line 

1  After  making  this  line,  which  is  79  miles  long  and 
absorbed  nine  or  ten  millions  (rupees)  of  public  money,  the 
Indian  Government  decided  against  bridging  the  Indus 
at  Kushalgarh,  on  the  ground  that  that  point  was  too  near 
to  the  existing  bridge  at  Attock,  a  discovery  which  they 
surely  might  have  made  before  beginning  it.  A  fictitious 
air  of  completeness  will  shortly  be  bestowed  on  this  muti- 
lated line,  by  the  establishment  of  a  connection  between  it 
and  the  equally  useless  Sind-Sagar  Railway. 


MILITARY   RAILWAYS  21 

starts  from  Lala  Musa,  on  the  North -Western 
Railway,  twenty-one  miles  south  of  Jhelum,  and 
runs  for  157  miles  due  west  to  Kundian,  on  the 
left  bank  of  the  Indus.  Here  it  turns  to  the  south 
and  follows  the  course  of  the  river  to  Mahmud 
Kote,  whence  it  takes  an  easterly  direction  to 
Shershah,  where  it  merges  again  into  the  North- 
western Railway. 

Its  most  remarkable  features  are  the  two  great 
bridges,  the  one  over  the  Jhelum  at  Chalk  Nizam, 
the  other  over  the  Chenab  at  Shershah.1  But 
though,  owing  to  the  flatness  of  the  country  to  be 
traversed,  the  Sind-Sagar  main  line  was  compara- 
tively easy  to  make,  it  is  difficult  to  maintain  it 
in  working  order  on  account  of  the  numerous 
drainage  lines  which,  when  the  Jhelum,  Chenab, 
and  Indus  are  in  flood,  spill  over  and  inundate  the 
whole  district.  Heavy  embankments  and  numer- 
ous culverts  are  supposed  to  guard  it  against  the 
encroachments  of  the  water,  but,  in  reality,  traffic 

1  Both  these  bridges  greatly  exceed  that  at  Attock  in 
length,  and  the  foundations  of  both  have  had  to  be  carried 
down  to  a  depth  of  75  ft.  below  the  cold  weather  level  of 
the  rivers  they  span,  on  account  of  the  great  scour  of  their 
waters  in  flood  time. 


22  MILITARY    RAILWAYS 

is  often  interrupted  for  days  and  weeks  together. 
In  the  rains  of  1889,  for  instance,  the  Indus  rose 
so  persistently  that  for  a  long  time  no  repairs 
could  be  executed,  and  the  floods,  running  four- 
teen miles  an  hour,  endangered  all  the  bridges. 

From  Kundian  the  Sind-Sagar  Railway  is  being 
extended  northward  1 1 5  miles  to  Attock,  through 
a  singularly  wild,  barren,  and  difficult  hill  coun- 
try, at  an  average  cost  of  Rs.  178,750  per  mile, 
the  average  cost  of  construction  of  commercial 
railways  in  India  being  only  Rs.  122,659  per 
mile. 

There  are  no  towns  along  this  line,  no  trade  to 
foster,  no  agriculture  to  develop,  and  its  only 
military  use  is  to  bring  Attock  into  communication 
with  Sukkur  and  Multan,  which  connection,  as  I 
have  before  mentioned,  had  already  been  es- 
tablished on  a  far  securer  basis,  by  the  completion 
of  the  North- Western  Railway,  to  say  nothing  of 
the  natural  communication  by  water  which  had 
always  existed. 

In  1891-92,  three  years  after  the  completion  of 
the  Sind-Sagar  main  line,  and  after  considerable 
progress  had  been  made  with  its  northern  section, 
the   Indian    Government   took    into  consideration 


MILITARY   RAILWAYS  23 

the  question  of  where  and  how  this  railway  should 
be  carried  across  the  Indus. 

The  engineers  consulted  by  it,  after  pointing  out 
that  "  the  cost  of  bridging  increases  as  we  descend 
the  Indus,  by  equal  increments,  from  Rs.  2,500,000 
at  Kushalgarh,  to  12,500,000  at  Dera  Ghazi  Khan,"1 
proposed  to  render  the  bridging  of  that  river 
possible  at  Dera  Ismail  Khan,  by  damming  up  its 
stream  in  a  gut  3,000  ft.  wide  ;  and  if  this  method 
of  solving  the  difficulty  succeeded  in  the  one  case, 
to  execute  subsequently  similar  works  at  Dera 
Ghazi  Khan.  They  did  not  advise  any  immediate 
attempt  to  bridge  the  gut,  which  they  felt  must  be 
tested  by  several  seasons'  rains  before  the  stability 
of  its  embankments  could  be  counted  on  ;  but  to 
meet  the  wishes  of  the  military  authorities,  who 
were,  as  they  well  knew,  eager  to  enter  on  the 
construction  of  railways  on  the  right  bank  of  the 
Indus,  they  recommended  the  immediate  establish- 
ment of  steam  ferries  at  Dera  Ismail  Khan  and 
Dera  Ghazi  Khan,  and  the  construction  of  branch 
lines  from  the  starting-points  of  these  ferries,  on 
the  left  bank  of  the  river,  to  Karhi  and  Ghazi 
Ghat  on  the  Sind-Sagar  line.      The  engineers  con- 

1  Administrative  Report  on  Railways  in  India,  1891-92. 


24  MILITARY    RAILWAYS 

eluded  their  report  by  asking  for  a  speedy  decision 
on  the  main  feature  of  their  scheme — the  narrow- 
ing of  the  Indus — on  the  ground  that  "  the  works 
must  be  executed  in  a  single  season,  from  October 
to  April,  or  a  new  survey,  with  perhaps  a  new  site, 
might  (may)  be  necessary." 

It  is  difficult  to  make  men  who  have  never  seen 
the  Indus,  comprehend  the  insane  folly  of  this  pro- 
ject. To  confine  a  stream,  often  four  miles  broad, 
within  an  artificial  gut  one-seventh  of  that  width, 
would  be  to  create  a  vast  lake  above  the  upper 
end  of  that  channel,  and  to  increase  the  velocity  of 
its  current  on  issuing  from  its  lower  end  to  so  fear- 
ful an  extent  as  to  ensure  the  destruction  of  every 
"bund"  between  that  point  and  Sukkur.  The 
Sind-Sagar  Railway,  if  carried  to  its  legitimate 
conclusion  after  this  fashion,  would  effectually  blot 
out  the  Sukkur-Jacobabad  section  of  the  Sind- 
Pishin  Railway — probably  Jacobabad  itself — and 
sever,  once  for  all,  Quetta's  precarious  communica- 
tions with  India  ;  and  if  the  monstrous  experiment 
were  to  be  repeated  at  Dera  Ghazi  Khan,  with  the 
result  of  creating  a  second  lake  between  the  two 
guts,  there  is  no  foretelling  how  wide  and  how  far 
the  work  of  destruction  might  extend. 


MILITARY   RAILWAYS  25 

Fortunately,  the  Indian  Government  was  hin- 
dered from  giving  the  early  decision  which  had 
been  asked  for,  by  the  necessity  of  consulting  the 
Government  of  the  Punjab  before  sanctioning  a 
scheme  which,  by  interfering  with  the  irrigation  of 
30,000  acres  of  that  province,  would  have  un- 
favourably affected  its  revenues  ;  and  the  delay 
gave  time  for  the  engineers'  prognostications  to 
fulfil  themselves. 

In  the  course  of  a  year  considerable  modifica- 
tions took  place  in  the  bed  of  the  Indus,  and  these 
combined  with  "a  more  complete  comprehension 
of  the  action  of  side  creeks,"1  and  the  necessity 
of  not  disturbing  valuable  cultivation,  "  necessi- 
tated eventually  a  new  scheme  for  1892-93,"  by 
which  a  portion,  instead  of  the  whole,  of  the 
great  stream  was  to  be  pent-up  within  the  gut 
and  "  collateral  bridging  was  to  be  resorted  to."  2 
Whether  this  amended  scheme,  estimated  to  cost 
more  than  two  and  a  half  million  rupees,  without 

1  The  Indian  Government  was  fortunate  in  that  a  scheme 
which  had  been  formed  in  incomplete  comprehension  of 
the  side-creeks,  was  not  forced  through  in  the  winter  fol- 
lowing on  its  hasty  promulgation. 

2  Administrative  Reports  on  Railways  in  India,  1892-93. 


26  MILITARY   RAILWAYS 

the  main  bridge,  commanded  the  approval  of  the 
Indian  Government,  and  enters  to-day  into  the 
long  list  of  military  works  which  are  under  official 
consideration,  I  have  no  means  of  knowing  ;  but 
the  success  of  the  steam  ferry  lines  from  the 
Sind-Sagar  Railway  to  the  Indus,  without  which 
the  bridges  would  have  no  raison  d'etre,  has  not 
been  of  a  nature  to  encourage  any  attempt  to 
reduce  that  river  to  a  width  "  that  would  be 
favourable  for  bridging,"  *  either  at  Dera  Ismail 
Khan  or  at  Dera  Ghazi  Khan.  The  line,  four- 
teen miles  long,  from  Karhi  to  a  point  on  its 
left  bank  opposite  the  former  station,  was  actu- 
ally made  in  1892,  and  no  sooner  had  it  been 
completed,  than  it  was  "  submerged  and  seriously 
breached  before  opening  for  traffic,"  whilst  the 
engineers  had  to  confess  that  the  ferry  line  from 
Ghazi  Ghat  to  the  main  channel  of  the  Indus 
was  found  impracticable,  "  as  the  floods  rendered 
its  construction  impossible."  2 

From  the  same  report  of  the  Director-General 
of  Railways,  we  learn  that,  "  in  view  of  the  im- 
practicability of  keeping  up  these  branches  during 

1  Administrative  Reports  on  Railways  in  India,  1892-93. 
1  Ibid.,  1893-94. 


MILITARY   RAILWAYS  27 

the  monsoon,  it  was  under  consideration  whether 
the  Karhi  branch  (opposite  Dera  Ismail  Khan) 
should  not  be  dismantled,  and  the  idea  of  a  branch 
line  to  Ghazi  Ghat  abandoned  ;  the  material  for 
these  branches  being,  however,  kept  ready  stocked, 
in  case  emergency  lines  should  be  required." 

It  appears,  therefore,  that  565  miles  of  railway 
— for  the  most  part  utterly  useless  so  far  as  the 
material  development  of  the  country  traversed 
was  concerned — had  been  constructed,  or  were  in 
course  of  construction,  by  the  orders  of  the  Indian 
Government,  in  obedience  to  the  counsels  of  its 
military  advisers,  before  any  attempt  had  been  made 
to  ascertain  whether  the  purpose  it  was  intended 
to  serve  zuas  s?isceptible  of  accomplishment ;  and 
that  it  is  kept  open,  year  after  year,  at  a  heavy 
loss  to  the  Indian  Exchequer,  whilst  all  the  time 
the  Indus  forms  a  safe  and  permanent  line  of 
communication  between  Attock  and  the  canton- 
ments down  stream,  and  enough  steamers  and 
fiats  to  carry  a  Division  could  be  built  for  a  less 
sum  than  is  being  wasted,  month  by  month,  on 
the  Mari-Attock  branch  of  the  Sind-Sagar  Rail- 
way, which  will  not  connect  Dera  Ismail  or  Dera 
Ghazi  Khan  with  the  great  arsenals  and  military 


2  8  MILITARY   RAILWAYS 

centres  of  the  Punjab,  and  which  may  prove  as 
open  to  destructive  accidents  of  all  kinds  as  the 
Harnai  Valley  line,  which  it  will  rival  in  the 
number  of  its  viaducts,  tunnels,  and  bridges. 

Additional  light  is  being  thrown  upon  the 
reckless  waste  of  public  money  in  connection  with 
this  abortive  enterprise,  by  the  construction  of  the 
Waziristan-Multan  line.  This  railway  will  be  157 
miles  shorter  than  the  Sind-Sagar  line,  will  run 
through  an  irrigable  and  fertile  district,  will  be 
easy  and  cheap  to  make,  and,  judging  by  its 
alignment  on  the  watershed  of  the  Chenab  and 
the  Ravi,  it  will  be  above  the  action  of  the  floods 
of  either  river,  and  consequently  must  secure  to 
Multan  a  second  permanent  line  of  communica- 
tion with  Jhelum  and  Lahore.  But  if  it  will  do 
this  to-day  it  would  have  done  as  much  in  1884, 
and  the  Sind-Sagar  Railway  was  as  unnecessary 
for  its  secondary,  as  it  has  proved  futile  in  regard 
to  its  primary  object. 

The  Sind-Pishin,  the  Kushalgarh,  and  the  Sind- 
Sagar  Railways  represent  all  that  has  hitherto 
been  accomplished  in  the  matter  of  military 
railways  on  the  North- West  Frontier,  but  many 
other  lines  are  projected.     As  soon  as  the  financial 


MILITARY   RAILWAYS  29 

embarrassments  of  the  Government  will  permit 
of  the  outlay,  there  is  to  be  a  Dera  Ismail  Khan 
Railway  across  the  desert  to  the  foot  of  the  Gomal 
Pass  ;x  a  Zhob  Valley  Railway,  to  connect  the 
Gomal  with  the  Thai  Chotiali  route  ;2  a  Tochi 
Railway,  to  give  access  to  Waziristan  ;  a  Bunnu 
Railway,  to  join  on  to  the  Tochi  line;  and  a 
Peshawur-Michni  Railway,  to  guard  the  Indian 
Empire  against  the  danger  of  a  sudden  Russian 
invasion  down  the  Kabul  River. 

Now,  one  thing  is  certain,  viz.,  that  if  we  had 
remained  content  with  India's  frontier  as  it  existed 
prior  to  the  second  Afghan  War,  not  one  of  these 

1  "  Including  14  miles  of  the  ferry  scheme,  this  line  will 
be  68^  miles  long,  and,  apart  from  giving  access  to  the 
Gomal  Pass,  it  serves  no  serious  commercial  or  military 
object,  in  a  direct  sense? — Administrative  Report  of  the 
Railways  in  India,  1892-93. 

'2  This  line  will  be  267  miles  long,  and  the  estimated  cost 
of  the  main  works  amounts  to  Rs.  48,895,982,  one-twelfth 
or  one-thirteenth  of  the  net  annual  revenue  of  the  whole  of 
India.  One  20-mile  stretch  running  along  the  Gomal  River, 
which  will  be  one  succession  of  tunnels  and  cuttings,  is 
estimated  to  cost  Rs.  392,000  per  mile — more  than  three 
times  the  average  cost  of  the  construction  of  commercial 
railways  in  India. — See  Administrative  Report  of  the  Rail* 
ways  in  India,  1891-92. 


3o  MILITARY  RAILWAYS 

railways  would  ever  have  been  heard  of ;  the 
chain  of  posts  which  then  watched  the  mouths 
of  the  Afghan  passes  being  well  able  to  support 
each  other,  or  to  receive  support  from  larger 
stations  in  their  rear,  and  to  hold  their  own 
against  any  number  of  mountaineers,  shorn  of 
half  their  force,  and  far  more  than  half  their 
military  capacity,  by  exchanging  their  hill-sides 
for  the  plains  in  which  our  Native  troops,  especially 
our  Native  Cavalry,  are  most  at  home.  Soldiers 
like  the  133  men  of  the  Sind  Irregular  Horse — all 
Hindustanis,  be  it  remembered — who,  on  the  1st 
October,  1847,  under  the  command  of  Lieutenant 
Merewether,  first  received  the  charge  of  a  body  of 
Bugtis,  over  seven  hundred  strong,  and  then,  taking 
the  offensive,  literally  killed  or  captured  the  entire 
number,  with  the  exception  of  two,  out  of  twenty- 
five  horsemen,  who  succeeded  in  making  their 
escape;  soldiers  like  the  158  men  of  the  5th 
Punjab  Cavalry,  who,  on  the  13th  March,  i860, 
led  by  Ressaidar  Sahadutt  Khan,  decoyed  a  force 
of  three  to  four  thousand  Waziris,  who  had 
assembled  with  the  intention  of  raiding  into 
British  territory,  from  the  shelter  of  the  hills,  and 
then  attacked  and    totally   defeated    them,  killing 


MILITARY   RAILWAYS  31 

160  men  and  wounding  a  large  number  ;  soldiers 
such  as  these,  I  say,  with  all  the  advantages  of 
position  on  their  side,  had  no  need  of  railways 
to  bring  up  reinforcements  from  Multan  or 
Lahore,  a  handful  of  men  from  one  or  two  neigh- 
bouring posts — the  posts  on  our  old  frontier  were 
only  ten  to  fifteen  miles  apart — or  at  worst  a 
couple  of  regiments  from  Rajunpur,  Dera  Ghazi 
Khan,  Dera  Ismail  Khan,  Bunnu  or  Kohat — were 
reinforcements  enough  wherever  British  territory 
was  threatened. 

How  different  the  position  to-day !  The  men 
may  be  as  brave,  but  with  traitors  and  spies  in 
their  ranks  ;  shut  up  among  the  hills,  with  no 
plains  at  hand  into  which  to  draw  down  their 
foes  and  there  crush  them  by  a  dashing  cavalry 
charge  ;  with  those  foes  not  only  in  front,  but  in 
rear  and  on  either  flank,  each  post  too  weak  to 
help  its  neighbour — neighbour  in  name  only,  since 
thirty,  even  forty  miles  of  difficult  country  separate 
one  from  the  other — and  with  their  supports  in 
rear  hundreds  of  miles  away,  it  is  no  wonder  that 
the  Government,  responsible  for  placing  troops 
in  so  precarious  a  situation,  should  strain  every 
nerve  to  make  that  situation  a  little  more  secure, 


32  MILITARY   RAILWAYS 

and,  when  thwarted  in  one  scheme  for  providing 
their  new  frontier  with  safe  and  permanent  com- 
munications, should  fall  back  upon  another,  re- 
gardless of  expense,  and  without  inquiring  too 
narrowly  into  the  practicability  of  each  fresh  plan. 

"  But  the  Russians  ?  " 

The  Russians  ! 

Again  and  again  I  have  shown  that  the  Russians 
will  never  embark  on  an  enterprise  in  which  they 
cannot  hope  to  be  successful  ;  that  India,  behind 
her  triple  rampart  of  mountain,  desert  and  river, 
is,  and  so  long  as  she  forms  part  of  the  British 
Empire,  always  will  be  safe  from  invasion.  Now 
I  am  prepared  to  go  further,  and  to  maintain 
that  if  the  Russians  should  determine  to  attempt 
the  impossible,  should  issue  from  Afghanistan  in 
unimpaired  strength,  should  cross  the  desert  with- 
out perishing  in  thousands  of  hunger,  fever  and 
heat,  should  escape  destruction  at  the  hands  of 
our  cavalry  and  horse  artillery,  India  would  still 
have  nothing  to  fear  ;  for,  as  the  Afghan  passes 
are  to  the  passes  of  the  Balkans  or  the  Alps,  so 
is  the  Indus,  and  the  country  through  which  it 
flows,  to  the  Danube  or  the  Rhine  and  the  lands 
they  water. 


MILITARY   RAILWAYS  33 

Rising  in  the  Himalayas,  outside  British  terri- 
tory, that  great  river's  catch-water  basin,  before 
receiving  the  waters  of  the  Jhelum,  the  Chenab, 
the  Ravi  and  the  Sutlej,  is  estimated  to  contain 
120,000  square  miles — an  area  equal  to  that  of 
Great  Britain  and  Ireland.  Above  Attock,  its 
vast  volume  swelled  by  its  junction  with  the 
Kabul  River,  it  flows  for  thirty  miles  in  a  broad 
bed  ;  below  Attock  its  channel  contracts  to  a 
width  of  from  one  hundred  to  four  hundred  yards, 
and  its  raging,  foaming  stream  runs  for  ninety 
miles  between  precipitous  banks,  varying  in  height 
from  seventy  to  seven  hundred  feet,  with  a  velocity 
of  from  six  to  ten,  or  even  fourteen  miles  an  hour. 
When  the  snows  begin  to  melt  in  the  high  hills, 
the  pent-up  river  rises  twenty  feet  above  its  cold 
weather  level,  and  in  the  monsoon  it  has  been 
known  to  stand  seventy  feet — on  one  occasion,  in 
1 84 1,  one  hundred  feet  above  that  level  ! 

About  fifteen  miles  below  Mari  the  Indus  issues 
from  this  ravine  and  spreads  out  into  an  open  but 
still  unfordable  stream,  five  hundred  to  fifteen 
hundred  yards  wide  in  winter,  and  from  three  to 
four  miles  across  in  the  rains.  All  along  its  right 
bank,  from   Dera  Ghazi   Khan  to  Sukkur,  a  net- 

B.F.  D 


34  MILITARY   RAILWAYS 

work  of  inundation  canals  stretch  away  to  the  con- 
fines of  the  desert,  in  itself  no  insignificant  obstacle 
to  the  advance  of  an  invading  army.  These  chan- 
nels, when  the  river  rises,  first  fill,  then  disappear 
beneath  its  spreading  waters,  which  change  a  dis- 
trict, hundreds  of  miles  in  length  and  from  thirty 
to  forty  in  breadth,  into  one  vast  lake.  Where 
and  how  could  the  Russians  cross  such  a  river 
even  in  the  cold  weather  ? — and  if  they  came  by 
the  Gomal  route,  to  command  which  the  Sind- 
Sagar  line  has  been  made,  it  would  be  in  sum- 
mer, not  in  winter,  that  they  would  arrive  on  its 
banks. 

Is  it  to  be  supposed  that  they  would  have 
carried  with  them  on  their  long  and  difficult 
march,  from  Kandahar  or  Ghazni,  the  pontoons 
necessary  for  the  bridging  of  such  a  stream,  even 
in  its  quietest  and  most  peaceful  aspect  ?  And 
where  on  its  banks  would  they  obtain  the  neces- 
sary materials,  or  how,  if  they  could  obtain  them, 
would  they  build  their  bridge  in  the  teeth  of  an 
enemy  stronger  in  numbers  and  far  stronger  in 
position  and  in   resources  than  they  ? 

These  questions  I  will  answer,  not  in  my  own 
words,  but  in  those  of  Lord   Chelmsford,  who,  in 


MILITARY   RAILWAYS  35 

an  article  on  "  The  Defence  of  India,"  published 
in  the  Asiatic  Quarterly  Revieiv  for  July,  1893, 
wrote  as  follows  : — 

"  General  von  Clausewitz,  the  highest  strate- 
gical authority  of  this  century,  says  in  his  work 
On  War\  'As  the  equipment  for  crossing  rivers 
which  an  enemy  brings  with  him,  that  is,  his  pon- 
toons, are  rarely  sufficient  for  the  passage  of  rivers, 
much  depends  on  the  means  to  be  found  on  the 
river  itself,  its  affluents,  and  in  the  great  towns 
adjacent  ;  and  lastly,  on  the  timber  for  building 
boats  and  rafts  in  forests  near  the  river.  There 
are  cases  in  which  all  these  circumstances  are  so 
unfavourable  that  the  crossing  of  a  river  is  by 
that  means  almost  an  impossibility.' 

"  There  are  no  great  towns,  there  are  no  great 
forests  within  sixty  miles  of  the  great  Indus  river ; 
and  there  are  only  a  few  insignificant  affluents  on 
the  right  bank.  It  zvould,  therefore,  be  the  grossest 
negligence  on  the  part  of  the  military  commanders, 
if  an  enemy  arriving  on  the  Indus  were  allowed 
to  secure  a  single  boat  available  for  bridging 
purposes. 

"  Without  boats,  without  timber,  with  a  hostile 
force   on    both   flanks    of  the   right   bank,  and  a 


3 6  MILITARY   RAILWAYS 

powerful  army  on  the  left  bank,  ready  to  oppose 
any  attempt  to  cross  the  river,  what  chance  would 
an  enemy  have  of  being  able  to  transport  from 
one  bank  to  the  other  all  the  men  and  material 
requisite  for  such  a  task  as  an  invasion  of  India  ? 
If  then  General  von  Clausewitz's  opinion  is  to  be 
accepted,  the  crossing  of  the  Indus  by  an  enemy, 
in  such  force  as  to  endanger  the  safety  of  India, 
should  be  considered  not  as  almost,  but  as  entirely 
impossible." 

Reason  and  common  sense  echo  "  impossible," 
and,  lest  their  voice  should  be  disregarded,  experi- 
ence comes  to  their  aid.     In  1838,  for  the  use  of 
the  Bengal  column  of  the  Afghan  Expedition,  a 
bridge  was  thrown  across  the  Indus  from  Rohri  to 
Sukkur,  where,  in  Sind,  the  river  is  at  its  narrowest, 
only  five  hundred  yards  wide,  and  where  its  bed  is 
divided  into  two  channels  by  Bukker  island  ;  yet 
it  took  sixteen  days,  and  fifty-five  boats,  averaging 
17    tons    in    weight,    to    span     the    larger   of   the 
two  channels  between  Rohri  and  the  island  ;  and 
four  days,  and  nineteen  boats,  averaging  y\  tons 
in  weight,  to  span  the  smaller  channel    between 
the    island    and    Sukkur,    though    there    was    no 
enemy   on    either    bank  ;    and    twice    during   the 


MILITARY   RAILWAYS  37 

progress  of  the  work  the  bridge  was  in  danger  of 
being  swept  away  by  floods.1 

Where  those  boats  once  lay  moored,  a  magnifi- 
cent iron  bridge,  covered  by  a  great  bridge  head, 
now  carries  the  North-Western  Railway  across  the 
Indus,  and  an  invading  army  must  seek  some  less 
easy  spot  at  which  to  attempt  the  passage  of  that 
river  ;  and  where  is  the  spot  where  it  could  wait 
and  work  for  even  twenty  days  in  peace  ?  There 
is  none  from  Attock  to  Sukkur  where  we  could 
not  bring  an  overwhelming  force  to  bear  upon  its 
miserable  columns.  What  justification  is  there 
then  for  mulcting  the  Indian  people  yearly  of  vast 
sums  for  railways  built  on  the  pretence  of  protect- 
ing them  against  a  danger  which  has  no  existence, 
except  in  the  imagination  of  timid  and  ill-informed 
politicians,  or  in  the  writings  and  speeches  of  am- 
bitious military  men,  who  turn  the  alarm  which 
they  foster  to  account  for  the  furtherance  of 
schemes  of  aggression,  not  of  defence,  and  who  are 
not  ashamed  to  base  their  arguments  against  the 
old  North- West  Frontier  on  the  assumption  of  that 
"  grossest  negligence,"  without  which,  on  the  part 

1  Major  Hough,  quoted  by  Lord  Chelmsford. 


3 3  MILITARY    RAILWAYS 

of  the  Indian  authorities,  as  Lord  Chelmsford 
truly  says,  no  enemy  can  ever  cross  the  Indus. 

According  to  the  latest  prophet  of  this  faith  — 
and  he  only  says  what  all  its  champions  imply — 
we  are  to  be  deceived,  up  to  the  last  moment,  as  to 
the  route  which  the  Russians  will  adopt.  In  this 
uncertainty  we  are  to  leave  the  mouth  of  the 
Khyber  unprotected  and  undefended,  we  are  to 
have  no  force  at  Peshawur  strong  enough  to  crush 
our  enemies  should  they  issue  safely  from  that 
defile,  nor  on  the  Indus,  to  render  the  passage  of 
that  river  impossible  ;  and  the  roads,  rivers,  and 
railways,  which  bind  all  our  great  military  centres 
into  one  great  system  of  defence,  are  to  avail  us 
nothing  !  1 

The  whole  of  this  talk  is  as  ridiculous  as  it  is 
disgraceful.  If  the  Indian  Government,  with  its 
eyes  always  fixed  on  the  North-West  Frontier, 
with  hundreds  of  officers,  military  and  civil,  ready 
and  eager  to  risk  their  lives  in  obtaining  for  it 
trustworthy  information,  with  unlimited  funds  at 
its  disposal  with  which  to  buy  such  information 
from  Native  sources,  and  with  all  the  rumours  of 

1  An  article  in  the  United  Service  Magazine  for  October, 
1895,  by  an  Officer  of  the  Indian  Staff  Corps. 


MILITARY   RAILWAYS  39 

;he  East  reaching  it  daily  by  telegraph,  via 
Europe,  cannot  get  to  know  enough  of  the  move- 
ments of  a  vast  army  on  roads  hundreds  of  miles 
in  length,  it  is  quite  unfit  to  rule  a  great  Empire  ; 
and  if  72,000  British  soldiers,  and  twice  that  num- 
ber of  Native  troops,  trained  and  led  by  English- 
men, cannot  utterly  destroy  a  Russian  army, 
whenever  and  wherever  it  may  set  foot  on  Indian 
soil,  then  the  Commander-in-Chief  in  India,  and 
the  heads  of  all  the  great  departments  under  his 
orders,  ought  to  be  incontinently  cashiered. 

Meantime,  will  any  of  my  friends  of  the  For- 
ward School  be  good  enough  to  explain  what 
miracle  is  to  change  ignorance,  negligence,  and 
weakness  on  the  Indus  frontier,  into  knowledge, 
vigilance,  and  strength  on  that  undefined  and  un- 
definable  boundary  line  to  which  it  is  impossible 
to  give  so  much  as  a  name  ? 


;imate  Cost  of  the  Forward   Policy  on  the  North- West  Frontier  up  to  1896, 
including  the   Afghan  War  of  1878-79-80. 


I.     The  Afghan  War 


IV.     Special  Granls  to  Ueluchiuan  Agency- 


t  Allotment,  Rs.  865,600  per  anm 


Preparations  for  War  will,  Russi 
Special  Defence  Works 


ubsidy  in  lieu  of  right  to  collect  lolls  in  the  Bolan  Pass  si 
"885 

d  Rawal  Pindi    . 


lanent  Increase  of  Inlian  Army  in 

A.  10,753  British  7roops 

B.  19,220  Native  7ror.ps 

C.  Deferred  Pay  01  above  lir: 
a-.e  in  the  Native  PeiMon  F.sta 

txpc'lilions  on  rSurlh-W,.-: 
to  Govtramenl  ol  tmper'nJ  Set 


pemled  principally  on  the  Hera  Ghaii  Khan  and  Pi 

___„-86— 
7roops Rs.  95,809, 


fji.  024,  l.»>.i 

553,000) 

Campaigns,  and  other 


Special  Gra 
Transport 


Rs.  150,000- 
800,000 
90,000 
481,500  - 


n  of  the  Kuram  Valley  in  1892-93,  al  Rs.  450,0 


Grants  for  so-called  Mubilis.it  iuti— 


XVI.     Additional  Transport 


XVII.     Rise  in  price  of  food,  fora 


1  North-Wet  Froi 


5.°7S.6 
3.239.' 


XXI.     Chitral  Campaign,  including  occupation  of  Chitral  during  past  and  present  year 

XXII.      Klryber  Rifles  raised  after  the  War 

XXIII.     Subsidies— 

A.     Amir  of  Afghanistan  since  the  War 


Ruler  of  Chitral  and 
Gomal  Chiefe  since 
Other  small  Chiefs  o 


North- West  Frontier  . 


1 ,400, 6  jo  I 


Sir  Evelyn  Barin( 

Council. 
Administrative  R 


cial  Member  of  the  \ 


cial  Statements— 1885-i 


\        8th  Ju 
Appro 


1894-95.  ..  27,     ,.    H8. 
Return,  dated,   India  Offict 


id  Condition  0/  India,  1894-95,  p. 

Blue  Booi;  Chitral,  p.  20. 
Financial  Statements— 

'893-94,  p.  7.  par-  "• 

1894-95.  -  2'.  -    »3- 

1893-94,  ..  7.     ..     "■ 

1S93-94.  ..  'J.  .1     3* 

1894-95.  "    28,    „       121. 

Financial  Statement- 1 S93-94,  p.  7,  par.  11. 
Financial  Statements— 

18S9-90,  p.  24,  par.  57. 


1S94-95. 

)-9o,  P.  24, : 


iS93-94.  ■•    7.  ».    "• 

IS93-94. ..  27. ..  63. 

1S94-95.  ■■  28,  „  iai. 


Official  Estimate. 
Financial  Statements  - 

1895-96,  p.  15-  Par-  50.  and  p.  56,  par 


-1896-97.  P-  7.  par. 


3  years  at  12  lakhs,  3  at  18  takhs 
r  and  Condition  oj  India,  t 
/V/H,'  Btiet.  pp.  9  and  13. 


Progress  and  Ci 

Progress  and  Condition  of  Ittdt 


le  in  the  Budget  ]  ol  1?s.  t. 95.1, coo  lobe  expended  on  these  useltii  railway*. 

1  "A  large  aim  hji  been  spent  on  dcfc.i,  r    ..i,.l    military  . -i.,t.li.lir,„;i,r     ,:      ■  .,■■  i,.;e,  for  \ir ■. 


inniullyditbiirsedby  b 


Comparative  Statements  of  Home  Remittances  and  Expenditure  on 
Political    Department,   exclusive  of  exchange   except   in   first 


Financial  years  1877-78  {the  year  preceding 

the  Afghan 

War)  and  1895-96. 

'877-76. 

1855-96. 

.nercase. 

_. 

Secretary  or  State's  Bills  sold       .  ) 
Political  Department  .         '.         \ 

166,397,610 

4,689,750 

320.982.000 
£18,300,000 

224,'33.ooo,-a 

40,091.000 
10,199,000 

203.997.000 

£t. 166.000 
S7.735.390 
18,508,630 
5.509.2SO 

An  increase  of  four-fifth:-. 
An  increase  of  more  than  a  third. 
An  increase  of  nearly  double. 
An  increase  of  more  than  double. 

CHAPTER   III 

COST   OF   THE    FORWARD   POLICY 

"  The  true  cause  of  India's  financial  perplexities  is  the 
restless  frontier  policy  that  has  been  pursued  for  the  last 
ten  years,  side  by  side  with  the  reckless  outlay  on  railways." 
—A.  K.  Connell,  M.A. 

"  The  facts  which  I  have  brought  to  your  notice  may 
be  briefly  recapitulated — an  Eastern  country  governed  in 
accordance  with  expensive  Western  ideas,  an  immense  and 
poor  population,  a  narrow  margin  of  possible  additional 
revenue,  a  constant  tendency  for  expenditure  to  outgrow 
revenue,  a  system  of  Government  in  India  favourable  to  in- 
crease of,  and  unfavourable  to  reduction  of,  expenditure,  no 
financial  control  by  intelligent  and  well-i?iformed  public 
opinion  either  in  India  or  in  England,  an  insufficient  check 
on  expenditure  in  India,  a  remote  and  imperfect  control 
exercised  from  England,  a  revenue  specially  liable  to  fluctu- 
ations year  to  year,  and  growing  foreign  payments." — Sir 
David  Barbour,  Late  Financial  Member  Viceroy's  Council. 

"  In  every  one  of  the  eight  years  after  1885  net  Indian 
military  expenditure  increased  on  the  average  by  more  than 
the  whole  increase  during  the  ten  years  before  1885." — Sir 
W.  Wedderburn,  M.P. 

"  If  we  enter  on  a  course  of  successive  measures  of  fresh 
taxation,  Russia,  without  moving  a  man  or  a  gun,  need  only 
to  bide  her  time.  If  slow  and  sure  is  her  game,  surely  and 
slowly  we  shall  be  playing  her  hand  for  her." — Sir  Auck- 
land Colvin,  Late  Financial  Member  Viceroy's  Council. 

The    accompanying    table    contains    the    official 
confession  of  the   cost  of    the  Forward  Policy  to 

41 


42       COST   OF  THE   FORWARD   POLICY 

the  people  of  India,  a  confession  that  is  very  far 
from  telling  the  whole  tale  of  cruel  exactions  and 
dangerous  waste  which  is  the  true  history  of  that 
policy. 

Take,  for  instance,  the  first  item  in  that  table, 
the  cost  of  the  Afghan  War — Rs.  223,110,000 — 
and  see  how  it  expands  in  the  light  of  Major 
Evelyn  Baring's  admission,  in  his  Financial  State- 
ment of  the  year  1882-83,  that  "it  cannot  be 
doubted  that  a  great  deal  of  the  expenditure 
debited  to  the  ordinary  (military)  account  really 
belongs  to  the  war,"  and  that  money  spent  "by 
reason  of  it  " — the  war — "  was  set  down  among 
civil  charges."  In  proof  of  this  latter  assertion  he 
adduced  the  fact  that  the  Punjab  Northern  State 
Railway,  the  construction  of  which  had  to  be 
hurried  on  for  the  purpose  of  moving  up  troops 
and  supplies,  cost,  on  that  account,  considerably 
more  than  it  otherwise  would  have  done,  and  yet 
not  a  rupee  of  this  enhanced  price  was  debited  to 
war  expenditure  ; l  but  he  made  no  mention  of 
the  large  sums  spent,  during  the  three  years  the 
war  lasted,  by  the  political  officers  in  buying  the 
services  or  the  neutrality  of  the  tribesmen,  either 
1  Indian  Financial  Statement  for  1882-83. 


COST   OF  THE   FORWARD   POLICY       43 

individually  or  collectively,  along  the  three  lines 
of  advance,  nor  yet  of  the  cost  of  those  political 
officers  themselves,  taken  from  their  Indian  ap- 
pointments, yet  still  drawing  their  pay  from  the 
Civil  List,  though  both  these  forms  of  expenditure 
were  due  to  the  war. 

There  is  nothing  to  surprise  us  in  these  decep- 
tive classifications  ;  they  are  the  natural  outcome 
of  the  desire  to  minimise  the  cost  of  a  policy 
which  runs  counter  to  the  wishes  and  interests  of 
the  people  who  have  to  pay  for  it  ;  and  they  are 
as  common  as  they  are  natural,  vitiating  the 
official  figures  for  all  the  frontier  expeditions  and 
minor  operations,  just  as  much  as  they  falsify 
those  of  the  Afghan  War.  One  proof  of  this, 
but  that  a  very  glaring  one,  must  suffice. 

During  a  period  of  ten  years — from  1885  to 
1895 — great  activity  prevailed  all  along  our 
frontier,  from  Quetta  to  Gilgit,  from  Sikkim 
to  Burma,  the  expeditions  and  operations  on  its 
north-west    section    alone    admittedly    absorbing 

Rs.  52,569,500.     In  reality  they  cost  considerably 

more. 
In    the     Financial     Statement    for     the     year 

1888-89,  R-s-  2,035,000  were  set  down  to  mobili- 


44       COST   OF   THE    FORWARD   POLICY 

zation — an  entirely  new  item  of  expenditure — 
which  was  thus  explained  and  defended  by 
Sir  David  Barbour,  then  the  Financial  Member 
of  Council:  "The  Rs.  2,035,000  on  account  of 
mobilization  is  intended  to  meet  the  cost  of 
purchasing  transport  animals,  provisions,  and 
equipment,  so  that,  in  case  of  need,  an  army 
corps  may  be  in  a  position  to  take  the  field 
promptly.  This  is  one  of  those  precautions  which, 
in  the  present  day  of  scientific  warfare,  cannot  be 
neglected.  The  greater  portion  of  the  cost  tvill 
be  incurred  once  and  for  all,  and  will  not  recur."  1 
The  Rs.  2,035,000  proved  insufficient  for  the 
purpose  in  view,  and  the  Financial  Statement 
for  1890-91  contained  a  further  provision  of 
Rs.  600,000,  "  to  complete  the  arrangements  and 
preparations  to  facilitate  mobilization." 

To  people  of  my  views,  the  need  of  providing 
for  the  mobilization  of  an  army  corps,  for  service 
across  the  frontier,  was  not  apparent  ;  but  we  de- 
rived a  certain  amount  of  comfort  from  the  assur- 
ance that  the  process,  unnecessary  as  we  thought 
it,  and  expensive  as  it  certainly  was,  had  been 
completed,    and    we    noted    with    satisfaction    the 

1  Indian  Financial  Statement,  1889-90,  page  24,  par.  57. 


COST   OF   THE   FORWARD   POLICY         45 

absence  of  the  word  mobilization  from  the 
Financial  Statement  for  the  year  1891-92.  All 
the  greater,  therefore,  were  our  disappointment 
and  astonishment  when,  in  the  course  of  the 
same  year,  a  revised  estimate  was  made  public, 
in  which,  besides  Rs.  800,000  "  sanctioned  during 
the  year  for  additional  transport  mules,"  and 
Rs.  521,000  "for  remounts  and  ordnance  mules,"1 
Rs.  2,134,000  were  set  down  as  "Expenditure  in 
India  in  preparations  to  facilitate  mobilisation "  ; 
whilst  the  Financial  Statement  for  1892-93  placed 
Rs.  616,000  to  the  account  of  "  Measures  intended 
to  facilitate  the  speedy  mobilization  of  the  army" 

Now,  if  Rs.  2,635,000  was  an  adequate  provision 
for  the  mobilization  of  an  army  corps — there  was 
never  any  talk  of  mobilizing  two — what  became 
of  the  transport,  provisions,  and  equipment  bought 
with  that  money  ?  There  can  be  but  one  answer 
to  the  question — it  had  all  disappeared,  used  up 
in  frontier  expeditions  and  minor  operations ; 
and,  so  far  as  transport  is  concerned,  we 
have  the  clearest  proof  that  the  Rs.  2,750,000 
nominally   devoted    to    mobilization    in     1891-92 

1  See  Table  of  Costs,  XVI.  A,  1891,  Rs.  1,321,000 
(Rs.  800,000+521,000). 


46       COST   OF   THE   FORWARD    POLICY 

and  1892-93  went  the  same  way,  for  when  in 
the  spring  of  1895  a  single  division — minus  the 
greater  part  of  its  cavalry  and  its  horse  and  field 
artillery — was  ordered  on  active  service,  it  was 
found  that  there  were  only  7,482  Government 
mules  available,  and  the  military  authorities,  after 
buying  or  hiring  every  baggage  animal  that  they 
could  lay  hands  on,  were  reduced  to  the  necessity 
of  borrowing  the  transport  service  of  the  Jaipur 
and  Gwalior  Imperial  Service  Troops,  and  de- 
priving a  number  of  our  own  regiments  of  their 
regimental  baggage  ponies.1 

In   the   current   year    Rs.  4,949,000   have   again 
been  devoted  to  the  mobilization  of  a  field  army, 

1  Sir  Henry  Brackenbury,  Military  Member  of  the 
Viceroy's  Council,  in  his  remarks  on  the  military  expendi- 
ture in  1895-96,  mentions  that  "no  less  than  40,000  trans- 
port animals  were  employed  with  the  Chitral  Relief  Force." 
As  regards  camels,  he  said  :  "  We  were  dependent  entirely 
upon  hired  camels,  or  upon  camels  purchased  expressly  for 
the  campaign.  .  .  .  But  the  number  which  could  be 
hired  was  extremely  small,  and  at  the  very  outset  the 
Government  was  obliged  to  have  recourse  to  purchase.  .  .  . 
The  camels  purchased  by  Government  have  for  the  most 
part  so  broken  down  in  health  that  it  has  been  found  im- 
practicable to  retain  any  but  a  very  small  number  of  them 
for  future  use" 


COST   OF  THE  FORWARD   POLICY       47 

and  Sir  James  Westland  has  promised  the  Indian 
taxpayer  that  Rs.  4,348,000  of  that  amount  "  will 
be  non-recurring,  initial  expenditure?  Can  he,  I 
wonder,  ever  have  read  his  predecessor's  similar 
assurance?  The  sum  is  large,  nevertheless  it  is 
absolutely  certain  that  if,  in  the  course  of  the  next 
two  or  three  years,  India  should  become  involved 
in  "scientific  warfare,"  she  would  find  herself 
utterly  destitute  of  the  means  of  prosecuting  it, 
unless  indeed  her  Government  had  meanwhile  put 
a  stop  to  the  expeditions  and  operations  which 
are  perpetually  frittering  away  her  resources  of 
all  kinds,  but  more  especially  her  supply  of 
transport  cattle. 

It  is  worth  noting  that  this  habit  of  concealing 
the  true  cost  of  past  expeditions  and  operations 
is  closely  allied  to  that  tendency  to  under-estimate 
the  probable  expense  of  each  new  phase  of 
the  expansion  fever,  to  which  we  owe  the  most 
stupendous  financial  blunder  on  record — the  es- 
timating of  the  total  net  cost  of  the  Afghan 
War  at  £5,752,000  in  February,  1880,  and  the 
revision  of  that  estimate  in  June  of  the  same 
year  by  rather  more  than  £9,000,000 !  The 
£15,000,000   at  which   the  cost  of    the   war  was 


48        COST   OF  THE   FORWARD    POLICY 

then  placed,  rose  in  October  to  ,£15,777,000, 
and  when  the  accounts  were  made  up  at  the 
close  of  the  financial  year — March,  1881 — this 
sum  was  found  to  have  fallen  short  of  the 
monies  already  expended  by  ,£828,000,  whilst 
war  expenditure  still  showed  no  sign  of  coming 
to  an  end  !  l 

The  story  is  so  old  a  one  that  there  has  been 
time  for  most  of  us  to  forget  it,  but  we  all  know 
that  it  has  repeated  itself  in  still  more  startling 
form,  though  on  a  smaller  scale,  a  propos  of 
that  campaign  which  so  unpleasantly  laid  bare 
the  deficiencies  of  Indian  transport  arrange- 
ments, and  the  untrustworthiness  of  Indian 
Budgets. 

The  first  estimate  for  the  Chitral  Expedition 
amounted  only  to  Rs.  1,500,000  ;  the  sum  actually 
spent  upon  it,  to  Rs.  17,647,000,  or  nearly  twelve 
times  more  than  that  estimate  ;  whilst,  accord- 
ing to  Sir  James  Westland,  "  it  has  left  us  a 
legacy  of  permanent  expenditure  in  the  oc- 
cupation of  Chitral  and  of  its  communications, 
which  has  involved  in  1895-96  an  expenditure 
of  Rs.  1,022,000,  and  will  involve  in  1896-97 
1  Indian  Financial  Statement  for  1881-82. 


COST   OF   THE    FORWARD   POLICY       49 

an  expenditure  of  Rs.  2,317,030  .  .  .  irre- 
spective of  the  Political  Expenditure  which  comes 
to  Rs.  200,000  in  1895-96,  and  Rs.  220,000  in 
1896-97;  .  .  .  also  of  Military  Works  Ex- 
penditure, Rs.  216,000  in  1 896-97."  1 

The  Indian  Finance  Minister  adds  that  "  it 
is  expected  that  it  will  be  possible  to  reduce 
these  figures  when  we  pass  beyond  the  initial 
stages  of  the  occupation,"  but  the  expectation 
derives  no  support  from  our  experience  in 
Gilgit,  where  the  cost  of  occupation  quadrupled 
in  the  third  year — 1891-92 — and  has  never  since 
declined.2 

I  shall  probably  be  reminded  that  Sir  J. 
Westland  explained  away  the  discrepancy,  1 
have  noted,  by  the  remark  that  "the  Budget 
provision  of  Rs.  1,500,000  was  intended  to  meet 
the  cost  of  preparations  which  it  was  hoped 
might  not  eventuate  in  war  "  ;  to  which  I 
answer  that  such  hopes  had  as  little  foundation 
as  the  expectations  mentioned  above,  and  that 
they  reflect  great  discredit  on  the  knowledge 
and    judgment   of    those    entertaining   them,   for 

1  Indian  Financial  Statement  for  1896-97. 

2  Chitral  Blue  Book,  page  20. 

B.F.  E 


50        COST   OF   THE    FORWARD    POLICY 

surely,  if  there  be  one  thing  more  than  another 
which  our  frontier  experience  ought  to  have 
taught  the  Indian  Government,  it  is  that  the 
mountain  tribes  of  the  north  and  north-west 
never  submit  tamely  to  the  passage  of  British 
troops  through  their  territories,  however  reas- 
suring the  proclamation  which  heralds  their 
approach,  nor  to  the  construction  of  roads,  in 
which  we  may  see  instruments  for  the  preservation 
of  their  independence  from  Russian  aggression,  but 
tiiey  can  recognise  nothing  but  the  time-honoured 
means  by  which  that  independence  is  confis- 
cated by  ourselves. 

As  I  am  on  the  subject  of  Chitral,  I  will 
note  here  one  of  the  many  deceptions  practised, 
consciously  or  unconsciously,  on  the  British 
public  by  the  English  official  defenders  of  the 
Forward  Policy.  It  will  be  remembered  that 
Mr.  Balfour,  in  a  speech  made  at  Manchester 
last  autumn,  assured  his  audience  that  there  had 
been  no  augmentation  of  the  Anglo-Indian 
army  as  a  consequence  of  the  occupation  of 
Chitral.  Now,  it  is  true  that  no  troops  have 
been  openly  added  to  that  army,  either  before, 
or    after    the     Chitral    campaign ;      nevertheless, 


COST   OF    THE   FORWARD   POLICY       51 

there  was  an  increase  of  1,861  British  and  1,565 
Native  troops  in  1893-94,  the  year  in  which  the 
Indian  Government  succeeded  in  extorting  from 
the  Amir  of  Afghanistan  his  consent  to  the 
establishment  of  British  influence  over  the  In- 
dependent Tribes  ;  in  1894-95,  on  the  eve  of  the 
Chitral  expedition,  an  increase  of  1,726,  in  the 
autumn  of  last  year,  of  946,  and  at  the  beginning 
of  this  year,  of  1,508  British  troops,  bringing  up 
the  total  strength  of  the  British  forces  in  India 
to  78,043  officers  and  men,  6,041  in  excess  of  the 
sanctioned  establishment,1  and  adding  thereby  five 
and  a  quarter  million  rupees  to  India's  annual 
military  burdens.  These  successive  augmenta- 
tions of  the  Indian  army — augmentations  entirely 
unauthorized,  so  far  as  I  can  discover — can  have 
had  but  one  cause  and  excuse,  viz.,  the  necessity 
of  providing  for  that  further  development  of 
the  Forward  Policy  for  which  Sir  Mortimer 
Durand's  negotiations  at  Kabul  paved  the  way. 
The  occupation  of  Chitral  has  been  part  of  that 
development,  and  Mr.  Balfour's  statement  was, 
therefore,    nothing     better     than     a     misleading 

1  See  Note  '  next  page. 


52        COST   OF   THE    FORWARD    POLICY 

quibble,  though  he  himself  was  probably  one  of 
the  misled. 

To  return  from  this  digression. 

My  table  represents  then,  in  very  inadequate 
fashion,   the  direct    cost   of  the    Forward    Policy 

1  Establishment  before  increase  in  J  British  Troops     6l)isg 
the   Army    was    sanctioned   in      Native  Troops  129,483 

1885-86.  j  

Total    ...     190,641 

Establishment     after    sanctioned  ^ 

increase.  (Return  East  Indian  I  British  Troops  72,002 
[Army],  dated  September  16th,  I  Native  Troops  148,498 
1887,  page  187.)  J  Tmal  _    ~2^soo 

Strength  of  the  Army,  April   1st, "" 
1894.  (See:  Moral  and  Material 
Progress  in  India  for  1893-94, 
page  171.) 


British  Troops      73,863 
Native  Troops    1 50,063 


Total  ...      223,926 

Average  strength  of  the  British  Troops  in  1895     ...       75,589 
(General  Annual   Return  of  British  Troops,  1895.) 
Strength  of  Native  Troops,  April  1st,  1895  ...     149,963 

{Moral  and  Material  Progress  in  India,  1894-95, 
page  128.) 

Total         ...     225,552 

Strength  of  British  Troops  in  India  on  the  1st 
January,  1896,  including  1,508  men  on  their  way- 
out  to  that  country  ...         ...         ...         ...         ...       78,043 

(General  Annual  Return  of  the  British  Army  for 
the  year  1895.) 


COST   OF   THE   FORWARD   POLICY       53 

to  the  Indian  people  ;  it  throws  no  light  on  the 
indirect  price  which  they  have  had  to  pay  for 
it,  great  as  that  price  has  been.  When  we 
consider  the  enormous  amount  of  labour  which, 
during  the  last  eighteen  years,  has  been  turned, 
more  or  less  by  force,  into  unproductive  channels, 
and  the  vast  number  of  lives  sacrificed,  whether 
in  the  making  of  military  roads  and  railways, 
or  in  the  transport  of  stores  of  all  kinds  to  distant 
outposts ;  when  we  add  to  this  drain  upon 
India's  first  element  of  prosperity — her  indus- 
trious population — the  waste  of  her  resources 
in  the  shape  of  beasts  of  burden — camels,  mules, 
ponies,  donkeys,  and  bullocks — withdrawn  for 
the  same  purposes  from  the  service  of  the  peasant, 
in  districts  where  not  only  the  actual  cultivation 
of  the  soil,  but  often  the  very  possibility  of  such 
cultivation  depends  upon  their  use,  and  from  the 
service  of  the  trader,  in  regions  where  trade  has 
no  other  means  of  transit — we  stand  aghast  at 
this  silent  bleeding  to  death  of  a  people  whom 
most  Englishmen  honestly  desire  to  benefit. 
Of  the  waste  of  human  and  animal  life  in  the 
two  Afghan  Wars — the  latter  duly  chronicled 
in    official    reports,    the    former   passed    over    in 


54       COST   OF   THE   FORWARD    POLICV 

discreet,  or  indifferent  silence — I  have  spoken 
in  a  former  volume,  and  I  will  not  recur  to  it 
here,  but  rather  try  to  impress  upon  my  readers 
the  sad  truth  that  that  waste  is  still  going  on, 
and  will  not  cease  so  long  as  military  roads 
and  railways  continue  to  be  made,  and  so  long 
as  thousands  of  troops  have  to  draw  their  sup- 
plies from  a  distant  base,  over  rough  mountain 
roads,  toiling  along  which  the  men  and  beasts 
of  the  hot  plains  are  often  exposed  to  bitter 
frost  and  deadly  icy  winds. 

There  is  a  passage  in  the  Administrative  Report 
of  Indian  Raihvays  for  the  year  1886-87,  which 
throws  a  lurid  light  upon  the  former  of  these  two 
great  sources  of  human  suffering  and  death  : — 
"  The  heat  (on  the  Harnai  Valley  line)  from 
May  to  August,  1886,  was  terrific,  and  so  trying 
on  many  occasions,  it  seemed  impossible  to  go  on 
with  the  work.  The  staff  suffered  terribly  from 
fever ;  the  plate-laying  gangs  were  practically 
renewed  every  month  by  fresh  importations  from 
India  as  they  melted  away  from  fever,  dysentery, 
and  scurvy.  In  the  same  way  the  gangs  of  girder 
erectors  dropped  off,  and  during  four  months  zvere 
tivice  replaced  from  India." 


COST   OF   THE   FORWARD    POLICY        55 

The  picture,  in  its  official  conciseness,  is  grim 
enough,  but  its  colours  darken  when  we  remember 
that  all  these  lives  were  thrown  away  on  a  work 
which,  within  five  years,  was  condemned  as  unsafe 
and  untrustworthy,1  on  which,  nevertheless,  we  are 
still  relying  for  keeping  open  communications  with 
Quetta,  because  the  line  that  was  to  supersede 
it,  constructed  under  the  same  conditions  and 
assuredly  at  the  same  cost  to  its  makers,  is  still 
unopened  to  traffic,  though  its  completion  was  pro- 
mised first  for  last  summer,  and  then  for  the  end 
of  last  year ; 2  nor  is  the  gloom  of  that  picture 
relieved  by  the  reflection  that  the  Harnai  Railway 
and  all  other  military  lines  are  perpetually  being 

1  "  This  railway  has  been  constructed  at  great  expense — 
20  million  rupees — but  unfortunately  it  has  been  found,  after 
working  about  five  years,  that  its  foundations  are  unsound, 
and  at  certain  stages  of  the  line  they  are  nothing  better  than 
dry  mud,  which,  during  the  rains,  is  converted  into  pulp, 
with  the  inevitable  result  that  whole  portions  of  the  line  fell 
away,  making  it  totally  useless.  As  this  railway  was  con- 
structed for  purely  strategical  purposes  in  case  of  war,  it 
must  be  said  to  have  failed  in  its  purpose?—  Sir  John 
DlCKSON-POYNDER,  Bart.,  M.P. 

2  "  It  has  a  gradient  which  in  places  is  as  steep  as  any  in 
the  world,  and  enormous  motive  power  will  be  required  to 
drag  up  a  heavy  train." — Sir  JOHN  Dickson-Poyndkr. 


56        COST    OF  THE    FORWARD    POLICY 

reconstructed,  so  that  the  toll  of  death  which  they 
exact  is  never  fully  paid. 

No  military  road  has  a  darker  tale  to  tell  than 
the  old  road  to  Gilgit,  since,  in  1876,  the  Maharajah 
of  Kashmir,  at  the  instigation,  or  command  of 
Lord  Lytton,  made  that  fort  a  base  from  which  to 
obtain  control  over  Chitral  and  Yassin.  The  hate- 
ful Be-gar — forced  labour — on  this  dreaded  road 
has  torn  the  peasant  from  his  plough,  the  crafts- 
man from  his  hammer  or  his  loom,  yes,  even  the 
merchant  from  his  shop.  To  escape  that  deadly 
slavery,  hundreds  of  families  have  fled  from  their 
homes,  leaving  their  villages  to  fall  to  ruins,  and 
their  fields  to  return  to  the  waste. 

To  mitigate  this  drain  upon  the  human  wealth 
of  the  country,  an  English  contractor  was  called  in, 
who  undertook  to  construct  a  new  road,  ten  feet 
wide,  with  a  gradient  of  1  in  10,  by  the  first  of 
July,  1893  ;  but  in  the  early  summer  of  that  year 
the  work  was  found  to  have  been  greatly  damaged 
by  floods,  and  again  hundreds  of  miserable  coolies, 
and  their  equally  miserable  beasts,  had  to  carry  the 
food  and  military  stores,  the  very  forage  of  a 
growing  garrison,  up  the  narrow,  slippery,  wind- 
swept path,  on  which  so  many  of  their    brothers 


COST    OF   THE   FORWARD    POLICY       57 

had  previously  perished.  Whether,  or  not,  that  new 
road  has  ever  come  into  use,  I  have  been  unable  to 
ascertain,1  but  I  do  know  that  so  far  from  being 
completed  at  the  date  specified,  Rs.  450,000  were 
spent  upon  it  by  Kashmir  in  1893-94,  ar*d 
that,  when  the  Pamir  Delimitation  Commissioners 
went  up  to  Gilgit  last  year,  it  was  not  by  it  that 
they  travelled  ;  and  I  can  safely  predict  that  in 
every  exceptional  season — and  most  seasons  are 
exceptional  in  those  regions — the  three  or  four 
months  during  which  it  may  be  free  from  snow 
will  be  taken  up  in  repairing  it,  and  traffic  will 
have  to  revert  to  its  old  track.2 

But  supposing  the  new  road  to  be  completed 
and  to  be  kept  in  good  working  order,  and  suppos- 

1  Apparently  the  Indian  Government  is  not  anxious  that 
any  information  should  leak  out,  for  according  to  a  private 
letter  from  Kashmir  this  summer,  "  at  present  the  ordinary 
traveller  is  only  allowed  to  go  as  far  as  Gurais,  three 
marches  from  Bandipur,  at  the  head  of  the  Wulur  Lake, 
and  the  route  to  Gilgit  is  only  open  to  the  Gilgit  garrison." 

2  Difficult  and  dangerous  as  the  old  Gilgit  road  may  be, 
it,  doubtless,  follows  the  line  which  long  experience  has 
proved  to  be  the  least  exposed  to  the  destructive  agencies  of 
nature.  Icy  blasts  and  snowstorms  may  kill  the  traveller, 
but  floods  and  landslips  leave  him  no  path  by  which  to 
travel. 


5S       COST   OF  THE   FORWARD   POLICY 

ing  a  transport  corps  to  be  organized  for  the  yearly 
victualling  of  Gilgit,  that  corps  must  consist  of  men 
and  mules  taken  from  useful  occupations,  and 
Kashmir  would  still  have  to  lose  their  productive 
labour,  and  to  pay  for  their  maintenance  in  worse 
than  idleness,  since  the  more  mouths  the  Indian 
military  authorities  can  contrive  to  feed  beyond 
the  Indus  frontier,  the  louder  will  they  clamour  for 
more  troops  wherewith  to  strengthen  old  garrisons, 
or  to  establish  new  ones,  and  the  heavier  will  grow 
the  burdens  that  the  Kashmiri  and  Indian  peoples 
have  alike  to  bear.1 

Those  burdens  may  seem  light  to  us  who,  with 
a  seventh  of  the  population  of  India,  raise  more 
than  double  her  revenue,  but  to  her,  in  her  deep 
poverty,  they  are  simply  crushing.  Poverty  is  the 
cardinal  fact  of  the  situation  which,  in  three  suc- 

1  The  annual  revenue  of  Kashmir  amounts  to  little  more 
than  Rs.  5,000,000  ;  her  military  expenditure,  roughly  speak- 
ing, to  Rs.  3,500,000.  For  the  maintenance  of  the  Imperial 
Service  Corps  alone  she  is  paying  Rs.  1,000,000  a  year. 
Small  wonder,  then,  that  the  compiler  of  the  Progress  of 
India  for  the  year  1894-95,  had  to  record  a  deficit  of  \\\ 
lakhs  in  the  Kashmir  State  accounts  for  1893-94,  the  year's 
revenue  amounting  to  Rs.  5,073,870  and  the  expenditure  to 
Rs.  6,242,750. 


COST   OF   THE   FORWARD   POLICY       59 

cessive  volumes,  dealing  with  its  different  aspects, 
I  have  been  trying  to  make  clear  to  my  readers, 
and  yet  the  fact  most  difficult  to  bring  home  to 
their  minds.  To  most  Englishmen  the  very  name, 
India,  conjures  up  visions  of  wealth  and  splendour, 
of  luxurious  courts  at  one  end  of  the  social  scale, 
and  silver-bangled  peasants  at  the  other.  The 
luxurious  courts  still  flourish,  but  the  silver-bangled 
peasantry  are  on  the  decline,  bracelets  of  lac  and 
brass  taking  the  place  of  bracelets  of  the  precious 
metal.  No  people  in  the  world  are  more  heavily 
taxed,  in  proportion  to  their  means,  than  the 
Indian  people  under  British  rule,  none  live  more 
constantly  on  the  brink  of  starvation.1     We  hear 

1  "The  burden  oflife  in  British  India  has  become  heavier, 
and  is  much  harder  to  bear.  Assessments  in  some  cases  are 
four  times  higher  than  they  were  wont  to  be  ;  salt  is  much 
more  heavily  taxed,  rights  over  grazing  lands  have  been 
abolished,  fuel  is  harder  to  get,  with  the  result  that  the 
labouring  classes  can  barely  provide  sustenance  for  them- 
selves and  their  families  even  in  the  most  hand-to-mouth 
fashion."— W.  Digby,  CLE. 

"  I  do  not  hesitate  to  say  that  half  our  agricultural  popula- 
tion never  know  from  year's  end  to  year's  end  what  it  is  to 
have  their  hunger  fully  satisfied."— Sir  Charles  Elliott, 
Late  Member  of  the  Viceroy's  Council,  and  Lieutenant- 
Governor  of  Bengal. 


60         COST   OF   THE  FORWARD   POLICY 

much  of  the  paternal  Government  which  watches 
over  its  vast  family,  ever  ready  to  hasten  to  the 
aid  of  its  distressed  children  ;  but  there  is  little 
paternal  in  a  government  which  first  spreads 
universal  destitution  and  then  relieves  it  in  isolated 
cases,  too  often  mitigating  famine  in  one  district 
by  creating  scarcity  in  another. 

I  could  give  endless  proofs  of  the  depth  and 
extent  of  the  poverty  which  prevails  in  India,  but 
a  few  will  suffice. 

Salt  is  a  necessity  of  life,  yet  when  the  tax  upon 
salt  was  increased  25  per  cent,  in  1889,  the  con- 
sumption of  that  necessity  fell,  with  a  growing 
population,  from  34,330,000  to  3  1,474,000  maunds  ;l 
and  whilst  in  Burma,  where  the  duty  is  only  one 
rupee  per  maund,  the  consumption  of  salt  is  17  lbs. 
per  head,  it  is  only  io^  lbs.  in  Bengal,  and  8  lbs. 
per  head  in  the  North-West  Provinces  and  Oudh. 
Is  it  conceivable  that  any  cause  short  of  utter 
inability  to  buy  more  would  induce  the  Indian 
ryot  to  stint  himself  in  a  commodity  which  is  essen- 
tial to  his  health  and  to  the  health  of  his  cattle, 
and  without  which  all  food  is  tasteless  and  un- 
inviting ? 

1  Progress  and  Condition  of  India  for  1894-95. 


COST   OF   THE    FORWARD    POLICY        61 

The  3^  per  cent,  duty  on  imported  cotton  goods, 
obnoxious  to  the  Lancashire  manufacturer,  pro- 
duced in  the  financial  year  1895-96  Rs.  11,685,000, 
about  one-third  of  an  anna,  or  less  than  a  half- 
penny, per  head  of  the  entire  population  of  India, 
including  the  inhabitants  of  the  Native  States ; 
the  excise  yields  nearly  57  million  rupees  per 
annum,  or  about  three  annas,  barely  2^d.,  per 
annum  per  head  of  the  population  directly  ruled 
by  the  English,  taking  the  rupee  at  14Y.  ;  and  the 
greater  part  of  this  sum  is  paid  "  by  the  Euro- 
peans in  India  themselves,  by  their  native  under- 
lings, together  with  the  few  rich  natives  who  have 
contracted  European  habits."  * 

Does  any  one  suppose  that  intoxicating  drinks 
and  opium  have  no  attraction  for  the  Indian  lower 
classes,  or  that  they  have  a  conscientious  objec- 
tion to  English  calicoes  and  prints,  or,  indeed,  to 
clothing  of  any  description,  because  a  loin-cloth 
for  outdoor  and  a  cotton  coat  for  indoor  wear  is 
all  the  covering  that  many  men  possess? 

The  tax  or  rent  owed  by  all  owners  of  land 
to  Government  may  be  taken  roughly  at  only  one 
rupee  per  head  of  the  population,  yet  it  is  too  often 

1  Investor?  Review,  September,  1S95. 


62       COST   OF   THE   FORWARD   POLICY 

paid  with  the  greatest  difficulty,  and  in  many 
cases  cannot  be  paid  at  all  ;  so  that  suits  for  re- 
covery of  rent  and  arrears  are  common  all  over 
India,  and  most  rigorously  enforced.  The  light- 
ness of  this  tribute,  coupled  with  the  difficulty 
often  experienced  in  collecting  it,  is  the  best 
proof  of  the  indigence  of  the  Indian  people,  and 
of  the  critical  condition  of  the  Indian  Govern- 
ment, which,  straining  in  ordinary  times  the  tax- 
paying  capacity  of  its  dominions  to  the  breaking 
point,  has  no  resource  in  reserve  on  which  to  fall 
back  in  seasons  of  emergency.  That  Government 
sucks  the  life-blood  of  its  subjects  to  no  purpose, 
and  grows  the  poorer  for  every  million  wrung 
from  their  necessities,  for  the  Forward  Policy's 
insatiable  maw  swallows  up  each  increase  in 
revenue  as  it  accrues. 

In  1888-89,  the  year  of  the  re-occupation  of 
Gilgit,  it  not  only  added  that  25  per  cent,  to  the 
hated  and  inhuman  salt  tax,  the  effect  of  which 
I  have  already  mentioned — it  laid  hands  on  a 
portion  of  the  balances  of  the  Provincial  Govern- 
ments, and  confiscated  the  fund  consecrated  to 
the  prevention  of  famine.  In  1894-95,  a  year 
which    bore    the  first  fruits  of  Sir  LI  or  timer  Du- 


COST  OF  THE  FORWARD   POLICY       63 

rand's  agreement  with  Abdur  Rahman,  in  the 
Waziri  War  and  the  initial  preparations  for  the 
Chitral  Expedition;  and  again  in  1895-96,  when 
that  expedition  was  carried  out — both  these  acts 
of  spoliation  were  repeated  ;  and,  if  in  the  current 
year  the  famine  fund  is  to  be  partially  re-estab- 
lished,1 and  the  balances  of  the  Provincial  Go- 
vernments restored,  these  acts  of  restitution  are 
due  to  a  variety  of  fortuitous  circumstances,  chief 
among  them  a  rise  in  the  value  of  the  rupee,  a 
rise  which  a  dozen  different  causes  may  at  any 
moment  transform  into  a  fresh  fall.2 

The  later  Indian  Financial  Statements  teem 
with  confessions  and  regrets. 

"  The  reduction  under  Construction  of  Railways 
is  due  to  the  fact  that  we  have  no  surplus  revenue 
to  devote  to  such  purposes  "  (F.S.,  1893-94).  "  The 
decrease  of  Rs.  3,707,000  under  Buildings  and 
Roads  is  due  to  economies  forced  upon  us  by 
our  present  financial  condition.      We  have  saved 

1  The  Government  of  India  decided  on  a  partial  reduc- 
tion of  the  Famine  Relief  Fund  on  the  eve  of  a  famine 
which  promises  to  equal,  if  not  exceed,  that  of  1876-78, 
in  which  the  mortality  was  appalling,  and  which  entailed 
an  expenditure  of  .£18,550,336. 

2  Indian  Financial  Statement  for  1 896-97. 


64        COST   OF   THE    FORWARD   POLICY 

Rs.  1,942,000  by  reducing  the  grant  for  Military- 
Works,  and  Rs.  1,760,000  by  cutting  out  practically 
every  new  work  upon  the  Civil  side  ...  to 
which  we  are  not  absolutely  committed "  (F.  S., 
1894-95,  p.  8).  "The  next  measure  is  that  we 
are  obliged  to  suspend  the  famine  grant  for  the 
time.  This  is,  as  has  often  been  explained,  the 
grant  of  surplus  revenue  to  the  construction  of 
Protective  Railways  and  Irrigation  Works.  .  .  . 
The  principal  railway  work  which  is  being  charged 
to  this  head  at  present  is  the  East  Coast  Railway. 
As  this  work  is  classed  also  as  a  productive  work, 
a  considerable  grant  has  been  given  to  it  under 
the  head  of  expenditure  not  charged  against  re- 
venue, so  that  this  particular  work  will  not  very 
greatly  suffer  by  the  suspension  of  the  grant. 
But  this  only  means  that  the  effect  of  the  reduc- 
tion is  passed  on  to  other  railway  projects. 

"  One  other  measure  we  have  been  obliged  to 
take,  namely  to  call  on  Provincial  Governments 
for  contributions  to  our  aid  ;  in  other  words,  to 
force  upon  them  severe  economies,  and  appropriate 
the  result  to  the  benefit  of  our  own  account.  The 
Government  of  India  were  most  unwilling  to  have 
recourse  to  a  measure  which  practically  means  the 


COST   OF   THE    FORWARD    POLICY       65 

stoppage  for  the  time  of  all  administrative  improve- 
ment— a  measure  which  they  feel  must  take  all 
the  heart  out  of  Provincial  Governments  by  making 
them  surrender  all  the  fruits  of  careful  adminis- 
tration to  fill  the  yawning  gulf  of  our  sterling 
payments"  {Ibid.,  pp.  9,  10). 

"  We  have  no  surplus  to  devote  to  the  con- 
struction of  Protective  Railways,  and  the  Famine 
Insurance  grant  must  for  the  present  remain  in 
partial  abeyance"  (F.  S.,  1895-96). 

"  Although  every  economy  has  been  enforced, 
the  Provincial  balance  has  been  reduced  to  a 
figure  which,  especially  in  view  of  the  scarcity 
impending  in  some  parts  of  the  (N.W.)  Province, 
cannot  be  regarded  as  safe"(F.  S.,  1896-97). 

How  well  the  admission  that  the  confiscation 
of  the  Provincial  balances  meant  "  practically  the 
stoppage,  for  the  time,  of  all  administrative  im- 
provement," accords  with  Lord  Mansfield's  warn- 
ing that  the  occupation  of  Afghanistan  (the  name 
being  used  by  him  in  its  broadest  sense)  would 
prove  the  stoppage  of  progress  in  India  ! 

But  am  I  justified  in  attributing  the  financial 
difficulties  of  the  Indian  Government  to  its  For- 
ward   Policy  ?      Does    not    one  of    the    passages, 

B.F.  F 


66       COST   OF   THE   FORWARD   POLICY 

which  I  myself  have  quoted,  claim  for  them 
another  source,  viz.,  the  great  change  that  has 
taken  place  in  the  relative  value  of  gold  and 
silver?  It  is  not  "the  yawning  gulf"  of  military 
expenditure,  but  of  "sterling  payments"  which 
the  Financial  Member  of  Council  accuses  of  com- 
pelling him  to  rob  the  Provincial  Governments  of 
"  all  the  fruits  of  their  careful  administration." 

I  am  aware  that  the  Exchange  difficulty  first 
made  itself  severely  felt  in  1885-86;  yet  this 
knowledge  cannot  shake  my  conviction  that  the 
financial  embarrassments  of  the  Indian  Government 
are  due  far  more  to  the  Forward  Policy  on  the 
North-West  Frontier  than  to  the  depreciation  of 
the  rupee.  It  is  quite  true  that  the  loss  from  the 
latter  cause  since  that  year  has  reached  the  enor- 
mous sum  of  Rs.  870,972,240,  whilst  the  former,  on 
the  North- West  Frontier,  has  cost  India,  directly, 
only  Rs.  714,580,480 ;  but  no  one,  I  suppose,  will 
dispute  that  two  burdens  weigh  more  heavily  than 
one,  and  that,  if  the  Indian  Government  had  not 
had  to  provide  the  smaller  sum,  the  expenditure 
of  which  was  optional,  it  would  have  been  in  a 
better  position  to  provide  the  larger  sum,  if  such 
provision  had  still  been  incumbent  on  it.     But  the 


COST   OF   THE    FORWARD    POLICY       67 

Forward  Policy  has  largely  swelled  the  Home 
Charges,  on  which  the  depreciation  of  the  rupee 
is  felt  by  the  Indian  Government,  how  largely 
the  reader  will  understand  when  he  learns  that, 
if  those  charges  had  remained  unchanged  from 
what  they  were  prior  to  the  Afghan  War,  India 
would  have  saved  in  exchange,  in  the  year 
1895-96  alone,  no  less  than  1465  millions  of 
rupees.1 

And  if  there  had  been  no  triumph  of  the 
Forward  Policy  in  1878,  and  no  renewal  of  its 
ascendency  in  1885,  and  India  had  been  spared 
the  Afghan  War  and  all  the  expense  of  subse- 
quent expeditions  and  occupations  ;  and  if  of  the 
Rs.  714,580,480  which  these  enterprises  absorbed, 
one-half  had  remained  in  the  pockets  of  the  Indian 
people,  and  the  other  half  had  been  spent  on 
irrigation  works  and  on  commercial  railways  and 
roads — especially  on  feeder  lines  and  roads  to  bind 
village  to  village  and  town  with  country,  from  one 
end  of  India  to  the  other — can  any  one  believe 
that  the  depreciated  rupee  would  have  endangered 
the  solvency  of  her  Government  ? 

The  following  table,  which   I  borrow  from   Mr. 
1  See  Comparative  Statement  at  foot  of  Table. 


68        COST    OF   THE   FORWARD   POLICY 


MacGeorge's  valuable  volume,  Ways  and  Works 
in  India,  throws  a  flood  of  light  on  the  results  of 
such  wise  expenditure,  a  light  in  which  the  ex- 
change difficulty  melts  into  insignificance,  for 
my  hypothetical  irrigation  works,  major  and 
minor  alike,  would  have  been  constructed  out  of 
revenue,  not  with  borrowed  capital,  and  the  whole 
profits  of  the  investment  would  have  gone  to 
Government. 

Irrigation  and  navigation  work  return  for  all  India, 
1890-91,  except  Sind  and  North-West  Provinces,  which 
are  for  1889-90.     Given  in  sterling,  not  rupees  : — 


Main  Canal  and 
Branches. 

Of  which  are 
Navigable. 

Distributing 
Channels. 

Area  Irrigated, 
1890-91. 

Miles. 
16,026 

Miles. 
2,882^ 

Miles. 
23,696! 

Acres. 
13,353,069, 

or  20,864 
square  miles 

Value  of  Irrigated 
Crops,  1890-91. 

Capital  Outlay 
up  to  end  of 

1890-91. 

For  Year  1890-91. 

Net  Revenue 
earned. 

Per  cent,  on 
Capital. 

£ 
23,879,607 

£ 

32,040,290 

£ 

1,829,741 

£ 

574 

JVote. — Value  of  irrigated  crops  for  1890-91  was  equal 
to  nearly  three-quarters  of  the  whole  capital  outlay.  See 
columns  5  and  6. 


COST   OF   THE   FORWARD   POLICY       69 

This  table  shows  what  the  cultivator  pays  for 
the  water  supplied  to  him,  but  not  the  great  gain 
which,  at  the  next  Land  Settlement,  will  be  reaped 
by  the  Government  in  the  shape  of  a  largely 
enhanced  land  revenue,  the  rental  of  irrigated  land 
in  Northern  India  being  two  to  three  times  that 
of  unirrigated,  and  in  Madras  up  to  twelve  and 
fifteen  times  as  much. 

No ;  whatever  it  may  allege  in  the  apologies 
which,  from  time  to  time,  it  is  driven  to  put  forward, 
the  Indian  Government  must  be  well  aware  that 
the  fall  in  exchange,  though  it  has  done  something 
to  increase  its  difficulties,  is  not  their  cause ;  and  it 
cannot  doubt  that,  with  a  prosperous  people  and 
an  expanding  revenue,  it  would  never  have  been 
reduced  to  shifts  which  it  practises  with  anxiety, 
and  confesses  with  shame. 

For  the  shame  I  have  shown  good  cause.  I 
have  still  to  prove  that  the  anxiety  is  equally 
legitimate. 

The  poverty  which  I  have  described  breeds  dis- 
content, and  the  discontent  calls  loudly  for  an 
increase  in  the  only  power  on  which  India's  alien 
rulers  can  rely  for  the  suppression  of  disturbances 
and  insurrectionary  movements. 


7o       COST   OF   THE   FORWARD    POLICY 

Yet,  notwithstanding  an  addition  of  37,365  men 
to  the  Anglo- Indian  army,  the  Indian  Govern- 
ment's military  position  within  its  own  provinces 
is  weaker  than  it  was,  and  tends  to  become 
weaker  still.  Insensibly,  irresistibly,  our  troops  are 
following  our  ever-receding  frontiers,  and  in  case 
of  a  serious  rising  beyond  the  Indus,  stimulated, 
perhaps,  by  Russian  intrigues,  this  centrifugal 
movement  would  be  much  accelerated.  Indeed, 
the  ideal  of  the  thorough-going,  outspoken  partisan 
of  the  Forward  Policy,  should  it  ever  be  realized, 
would  leave  the  Indian  Government  practically 
without  any  defenders. 

"  When  the  administrative  limits  of  India  are 
stretched  to  their  natural  and  geographical  limits, 
the  Hindu  Kush,"  so  wrote  Colonel  Mark  Bell,  in 
1890,  in  the  Journal  of  the  Royal  United  Service 
Institution,  "an  active  army  of  135,000"  (posted 
in  Herat,  Kandahar,  Kabul,  Balkh,  etc.)  "  will  be 
required  for  the  defence  of  her  scientific  frontier 
.  .  .  ,"  and  "a  large  portion  of  the  Indian  garri- 
son" (which  is  to  consist  nominally  of  100,000 
men)  "would  naturally be  stationed  in  the  Indus 
camps  and  in  Pishin,  and  the  flower  of  the  armies 
of  the  Native  princes  would  be  actively  employed 


COST   OF   THE   FORWARD   POLICY  71 

out  of  India."1  Yes  ;  and  as,  at  a  moderate  com- 
putation, every  man  of  that  vast  host  would  cost 
India  twice  as  much  on  the  further  side  of  the 
Indus  as  she  pays  for  him  on  the  hither  side,  it 
would  be  equally  "natural"  that  her  inhabitants 
should  seize  the  opportunity  thus  wantonly  con- 
ceded to  them,  to  rise  against  their  cruel  and 
insane  oppressors. 

We  are  not  so  far  yet,  but  provision  is  being 
made  to  enable  us  to  go  so  far  in  due  season. 

When  the  Mutiny  had  been  suppressed,  and  a 
Government,  made  wise  by  terrible  experience,  set 
itself  to  the  task  of  re-establishing  British  rule  in 
India  on  stable  foundations,  there  was  one  point 
on  which  it  made  up  its  mind  without  hesitation — 
viz.,  that,  for  the  future,  the  proportion  between  the 
British  and  Native  elements  in  the  Anglo-Indian 
army  must  be  never  less  than  one  to  two.2     Inter- 

1  I  suppose  Colonel  Bell  sees  his  way  to  moving  such 
a  vast  host.  Sir  Henry  Brackenbury,  however,  is  evidently 
of  opinion  that  we  should  find  it  difficult  to  move  a  single 
army  corps,  at  this  present  moment,  for  field  service  beyond 
the  Frontier. —  Vide ;  his  speech  on  the  Indian  Finances  for 
1896-97. 

2  On  the  29th  August,  1857,  Sir  John  Lawrence  wrote  to 
Mr.  Colvin  :  "  I  have  raised  eleven  regiments  of  Sikh  Infan- 


72       COST  OF   THE    FORWARD    POLICY 

preting  this  decision  in  the  spirit,  as  well  as  in  the 
letter,  Lord  Canning  and  his  Council  not  only 
increased  the  number  of  British,  and  diminished 
the  number  of  Native  troops — they  also  disbanded 
the  military  police,  which,  towards  the  end  of  the 
Mutiny,  they  had  been  compelled  to  raise;  and  it 
has  been  by  a  reversal  of  this  latter  measure  that 
later  administrations,  whilst  nominally  respecting 
the  proportion  of  one  to  two,  have  entirely  de- 
stroyed that  balance  between  the  two  elements  in 
our  armed  forces  which  is  essential  to  the  security 
of  British  power  in  India. 

In  1886  a  military  police  was  re-established — 
chiefly  in  Burma — and  in  1891  began  that  trans- 
formation of  the  ordinary  police  into  a  semi- 
military  body,  which  is  still  going  on  throughout 

try,  and  several  thousand  horsemen  of  various  kinds.  1 fear 
to  raise  more  until  I  see  the  European  troops  begin  to  arrive 
from  England.  .  .  .  The  error  we  made — an  error  which 
was  pointed  out,  but  to  which  no  one  would  listen — was 
adding  to  our  Native  troops,  while  the  strength  0/  the  Euro- 
pean Force  actually  fell  off.  The  insane  confidence  which 
continued  vociferation  on  the  part  of  our  officers  had  gene- 
rated in  the  fidelity  of  our  Native  army  had  produced  a 
belief  in  England  that  we  could  really  hold  India  by  means 
of  these  troops." 


COST   OF   THE   FORWARD    POLICY        73 

India.  The  battalions  of  the  former  force,  some 
19,000  strong,  recruited  solely  from  the  warlike 
races  of  Northern  India,  commanded  by  British 
officers  taken  from  the  Indian  army,  armed  with 
the  breech-loader,  well  trained,  inured  to  hard- 
ships, practised  in  jungle  warfare,  are  already  up 
to  the  level  of  the  best  of  our  Native  troops  ; 
and  when  they  receive  the  mountain  guns  which 
are  about  to  be  issued  to  them,  they  will  form 
the  finest  and  most  efficient  fighting  machine  in 
the  country — police  only  in  name.  In  the  latter 
force,  since  1891,  60,000  men  have  been  armed 
with  the  breech-loading  Snider  converted  into 
smooth  bores,  special  Reserves  in  all  districts, 
with  the  Snider  unconverted,  and  about  45,000 
with  swords  ;  so  that,  omitting  these  latter  from 
the  calculation,  the  proportion,  from  this  single 
cause,  stands   now   at    less  than   one    to   three ; ! 

1  In  considering  this  question,  it  must  be  remembered 
that,  in  recent  years,  owing  to  the  abnormally  unhealthy 
state  of  the  English  troops  in  India,  not  less  than  40  per 
cent,  being  on  the  sick-list  and  useless  for  war,  the  proper 
proportion  between  the  European  and  Native  soldiery  has 
quite  disappeared  ;  thus,  in  the  Chitral  Campaign  it  was 
found  necessary  to  alter  the  ordinary  constitution  of  our 
Anglo- Indian    Division    mobilized    for    field    service,    and 


74        COST    OF   THE    FORWARD    POLICY 

but  other  causes  are  at  work  to  disturb  it  still 
further. 

The  forces  of  the  Independent  Native  States 
have  always  been  a  source  of  danger  to  British 
ascendency  in  India,  and  it  is  deeply  to  be 
regretted  that  the  statesmen,  who  were  wise 
enough  to  cut  down  our  own  Native  army,  did 
not  see  their  way  to  abolish  the  armies  of  the 
princes,  who  had  either  shown  themselves  hostile 
to  us,  or  powerless  to  control  the  hostility  of 
their  soldiery.  But,  though  they  missed  this 
great  and  unique  opportunity  of  increasing  our 
strength    whilst    diminishing    our   expenses,   they 

draft  into  each  of  its  brigades  an  additional  British  regi- 
ment. The  Broad  Arrow  of  the  19th  September  last 
says  that  there  are  only  some  45,000  fit  for  service  out  of 
a  nominal  strength  of  70,000  men  in  India.  Amongst 
other  causes,  to  which  I  need  not  here  refer,  a  severe 
epidemic  of  typhoid  in  a  most  virulent  form  has  attacked 
the  British  garrison  of  India.  Commenting  on  the  ravages 
of  this  epidemic,  The  Pioneer  Mail  writes  : — "  We  would 
sooner  see  ten  lakhs  spent  in  sterilizing  filters  than  treble 
that  amount  devoted  to  mobilization  arrangements,"— as 
"  the  men  must  be  looked  after,  for  otherwise,  when  the 
elaborate  machinery  for  the  concentration  of  troops  is 
set  in  motion  on  the  outbreak  of  war,  skeleton  battalions 
alone  will  be  forthcoming." 


COST  OF  THE   FORWARD   POLICY       75 

at  least  abstained  from  repeating  the  mistake 
which  had  given  to  those  armies  their  formidable 
character.  Thenceforward  there  were  to  be  no 
more  Native  contingents,  drilled  and  led  by  British 
officers,  to  serve,  when  the  latter  had  been  got 
rid  of,  as  the  disciplined  nucleus  round  which 
their  undisciplined  comrades  could  gather,  as  the 
bulk  of  Scindia's  forces  gathered  round  that 
Gwalior  contingent  which  defeated  General 
Wyndham  at  Cawnpur,  and  endangered  Lord 
Clyde's  communications,  when  relieving  Lucknow. 
Now,  under  the  high-sounding  name  of  Imperial 
Service  troops,  the  Forward  Policy  has  given 
us  back  those  contingents,  in  the  very  heart  of 
India,  and  19,000  men,  attached  to  us  neither  by 
natural  loyalty  nor  by  self-interest,  yet  equal, 
thanks  to  the  exertions  of  their  British  in- 
structors, to  our  best  Native  regiments,  must  be 
thrown  into  the  descending  scale,  before  we  can 
say  how  far  the  proportion  on  which  so  much 
depends  has  really  been  altered  for  the  worse  ; 
and  even  then  we  shall  have  omitted  the 
Khyber  Rifles,  the  Frontier  Militia  recently  re- 
organized, the  8,000  or  10,000  Native  levies, 
armed    at    our   expense,   and    imbued   with   very 


76        COST    OF    THE   FORWARD   POLICY 

fair  notions  of  discipline  by  Native  non-com- 
missioned officers,  who  help  to  guard  our  North- 
West  Frontier,  and  even  our  communications,1 
and  the  reserves  of  the  Native  army,  consisting  of 
15,567  old  soldiers  "within  good  fighting  limits 
of  age," 2  whose  training  makes  them  a  power, 
even  without  the  arms  which  at  times  are  in 
their  hands. 

Do  not  let  me  be  misunderstood  ;  Native  levies 
are  a  good  thing  in  their  proper  place — in  front 
of  the  position  held  by  our  troops 3 — and  for  their 
proper  work — that  of  keeping  open  the  trade 
routes  which  pass  through  their  own  lands  ;  a 
Reserve,  dwelling  among  a  prosperous  people 
and  sharing  in  their  contentment,  is  a  good  thing 
also,  so  long  as  it  and  the  Native  army  taken 
together  are  not  permitted  to  assume  such 
proportions  as  to  seriously  outweigh  their  British 
comrades  ;  and  if  the  same  condition  be  observed, 


1  In  Khelat,  the  capital  of  Beluchistan,  "with  the  aid 
of  a  military  adviser "  (presumably  an  English  officer), 
"  a  new  disciplined  and  efficient  force  was  created." — 
Progress  and  Condition  of  India,   1894-95. 

2  Lieutenant-General  Sir  Henry  Brackenbury. 

3  Vide  ;  India's  Scientific  Frontier,  page  86. 


COST   OF   THE    FORWARD   POLICY        77 

there  is  nothing  to  object  to  in  a  military  police. 
Coupled  with  a  policy  of  peace  without,  and 
development  within  our  borders,  all  three  may 
make  for  economy  and  safety  ;  linked  to  a  policy 
of  conquest  without,  and  impoverishment  within 
those  borders,  they  can  merely  add  to  expenditure 
and  insecurity.  But  a  semi-military  police  is  en- 
tirely evil,  because  less  adapted  than  a  civil  force 
to  its  true  duties,  and  because  there  can  be  no 
question  of  its  taking  the  place  of  any  portion  of 
our  regular  Native  troops ;  and  yet  its  name  and 
its  ordinary  occupations  hide  from  men  the  fact 
that  it  is  so  much  added  to  the  armed  strength 
with  which  we  may  some  day  have  to  contend. 
I  am  no  alarmist  ;  I  do  not  believe  that  the 
millions  of  India  are  burning  to  shake  off  our 
yoke  ;  but  reason  and  experience  alike  assure 
me  that  the  negative  loyalty  which  is  all  that 
the  vast  majority  of  them  have  ever  given  us 
will  not  stand  too  hard  a  strain,  and  that  dressing 
a  man  in  uniform  and  putting  a  rifle  in  his 
hand  does  not  cut  him  off  from  his  own  kith  and 
kin,  nor  make  him  of  the  same  blood  and  creed 
as  ourselves,  bound  to  us  by  the  ties  which  can 
alone  be  implicitly  trusted    in  the   hour   of  trial. 


78       COST   OF  THE   FORWARD   POLICY 

Therefore  I  denounce  the  folly  which  weakens 
British  power  in  the  face  of  a  hungry  people, 
to  whom  the  Indian  Government  persists  in 
offering  a  scientific  frontier  in  lieu  of  bread. 
If  we  are  to  have  a  Forward  Policy,  let  it,  at 
least,  be  open  and  provident,  avowing  its  aims, 
and  asking  for  what  it  knows  it  will  need  to 
attain  them — a  large  increase  of  the  British  army 
in  India.  But  frankness  and  prudence  are  the 
last  virtues  that  we  can  look  for  in  the  supporters 
of  that  policy.  They  have  always  resorted,  and 
they  always  will  resort,  to  every  device,  however 
risky,  rather  than  allow  the  Indian  Frontier 
problem  to  come  before  the  British  public  in 
its  full  proportions  and  its  true  colours.  What 
one  man  can  do  to  neutralize  their  reticence,  I 
have  done,  and  at  this  point  I  might  claim 
their  condemnation  from  the  sturdy  good  sense 
of  our  common  countrymen  ;  but  before  summing 
up  the  facts  and  arguments  by  which  I  have 
exposed  the  hollowness  of  the  pretences  on  which 
they  have  been  creeping  westward  and  northward, 
and  the  lack  of  knowledge  and  wisdom  displayed 
in  their  military  dispositions  and  their  political 
acts    and    calculations,    I  will    further   strengthen 


COST   OF  THE   FORWARD   POLICY        79 

my  case  by  considering  no  longer  what  Russia's 
power  to  harm  us  in  India  might  be,  were  she 
established  in  Afghanistan,  but  what  it  actually 
is,  and  is  likely  to  remain. 


CHAPTER    IV 

RUSSIA'S   POSITION    IN    CENTRAL   ASIA1 

"  Respecting  Russia's  right  to  conquer  Central  Asia,  and 
England's  wisdom  in  opposing  her,  much  argument  may  be 
expended,  and  many  opinions  expressed  ;  but  there  is  one 
fact  which  stands  out  beyond  all  controversy — the  conquest 
of  Central  Asia  has  been  a  blessing,  not  only  for  Central 
Asia  itself,  but  for  all  the  nations  abutting  upon  it." — 
Charles  Marvin. 

"  I  have  been  to  this  region,  and  know  what  a  frightful 
country  it  is  for  an  army  to  traverse.  ...  It  is  one 
thing  for  a  solitary  man,  without  baggage,  to  scamper  over 
a  country  ;  it  is  quite  another  thing  for  an  army  to  traverse 
it,  weighted  with  artillery,  baggage,  and  all  manner  of 
impediments." — Captain  Masloff,  Russian  Engineers j 
Author  of  Skobcleff's  Siege  of  Geok  Tepe. 

"  A  modern  army  is  such  a  very  complicated  organism, 
that  any  interruption  in  the  line  of  communications  tends  to 
break  up  and  destroy  its  very  life." — Lord  WOLSELEY. 

There  are  two  opinions  held  by  Anglo-Indian 
political  writers  as  to  the  causes  which,  in  forty 
years'  time,  have  brought  the  Russians  from  the 
Sea  of  Aral  to  the  borders  of   Chinese  Tartary, 

1  Authorities  consulted  for  this  chapter  : — Captain  John 
Wood,  the  first  explorer  of  the  Oxus  ;  Sir  Henry  Rawlin- 
son  ;  Eugene  Schuyler  ;   Sir  Charles   MacGregor  ;   Colonel 

80 


RUSSIA'S   POSITION   IN   CENTRAL  ASIA   81 

and  from  the  Caspian  Sea  to  the  frontier  of 
Afghanistan.  One  school  of  thinkers  sees  in  this 
amazing  advance  the  deliberate  realization  of  a 
vast  scheme  of  conquest  conceived  by  Peter  the 
Great,  and  never  lost  sight  of  by  his  successors  ; 
whilst  another  believes  that  each  step  forward 
has  been  taken,  more  or  less,  against  the  will 
of  the  Russian  Government,  in  obedience  to  the 
necessity  which  compelled  it  to  subdue  one  semi- 
savage  state  after  another,  in  the  search  for  a 
boundary  within  which  it  could  consolidate  its 
power  and  enjoy  peace. 

Probably  there  has  been  something  of  deliberate 
purpose,  and  something  of  accident  in  the  phe- 
nomenon, but  there  is  a  third  cause  which  must 
not  be  overlooked,  if  we  would  judge  fairly  of 
that  phenomenon,  and  make  sure  of  drawing  from 
it  sound  conclusions  as  to  its  bearings  on  the 
safety  of  our  Indian  Empire — that  cause  the 
most    powerful    of    all    those   which    actuate   the 

Valentine  Baker  ;  Charles  Marvin  ;  Arminius  Vambery  ; 
C.  E.  Biddulph  ;  Lieutenant-General  E.  Kaye  ;  Colonel  G. 
B.  Malleson  ;  Captain  H.  C.  Marsh  ;  Times  Correspondent 
with  the  Afghan  Boundary  Commission  ;  and  various  Par- 
liamentary Blue  Books. 

B.F.  G 


82  RUSSIA'S    POSITION    IN    CENTRAL   ASIA 

human  race,  the  need,  namely,  of  the  necessaries 
of  life — food  and  forage  and  water.  Once  the 
Russians  had  set  foot  on  the  great,  treeless,  arid 
plains  of  Central  Asia,  there  came  into  play  the 
desire  to  get  beyond  them  ;  to  reach  some  land 
where  troops  could,  at  least,  be  fed  on  the  spot ; 
and  that  desire  has  continued  to  operate  with 
ever-increasing  force  as  the  conquering  armies 
left  their  original  source  of  supply  further  and 
further  behind  them. 

When  General  Tchernayeff,  in  1864,  emerged 
from  the  desolate  Kirghiz  steppes,  and  took  up  a 
strong  position  on  the  Sir  Darya,  he  looked  to 
Tashkend  as  the  desired  granary  ;  but  when  he 
had  effected  the  capture  of  that  city,  it  was  only 
to  discover  that  it  could  not  support  his  troops, 
and  to  find  himself  driven  to  risk  an  immediate 
collision  with  Bokhara,  by  the  prompt  occupation 
of  a  plot  of  cultivated  land,  about  twenty  miles 
square,  on  the  southern  bank  of  the  Chirchik, 
in  Khokand  territory,  over  which  the  first-named 
Khanate  claimed  to  exercise  a  protectorate. 

But  "  the  rich  transfluvial  fields "  x  proved  in- 
adequate to  fulfil  Tchernayeff's  expectations,  and 
1  J.  M.  S.  Wyllie's  Essays,  p.  5^. 


RUSSIA'S   POSITION    IN   CENTRAL   ASIA  83 

so  did  Khojent,  when  conquered  by  his  successor, 
Romanovsky,  though  it  brought  the  Russians 
into  the  country  lying  between  the  Jaxertes  and 
the  Oxus,  which  the  latter  general  pronounced 
the  Garden  of  Central  Asia.  After,  as  before 
that  event,  and  even  when  the  culture  of  cotton 
had  in  many  places  "  been  abandoned  for  the 
more  advantageous  grain  crops,  the  actual  in- 
sufficiency of  the  local  production  was  such  that 
most  of  the  grain  for  army  use  had  to  be  brought 
from  Viermy  Kapal  and  Southern  Siberia."  1  The 
Garden  of  Asia,  like  the  fertile  valleys  of  Afghan- 
istan, can  barely  produce  enough  for  the  wants 
of  its  inhabitants,  and  in  neither  country  can  the 
soil  be  induced  to  yield  much  more  than  it  does 
at  present,  for  lack  of  the  one  instrument  of  all 
agricultural  improvement — water. 

And  if  supplies  sufficient  for  the  support  of  a 
small  Russian  army  were  not  to  be  obtained  in 
what  is  undoubtedly  the  most  fertile  part  of 
Central  Asia,  still  less  have  they  been  discovered 
in  the  barren  regions,  into  which  the  Russians 
have  penetrated  on  their  second  line  of  advance. 
The  railway  which  starts  from  Usan  Ada,  a  small 
1  Schuyler's  Turkestan,  vol.  i.  p.  285. 


84  RUSSIA'S   POSITION    IN   CENTRAL  ASIA 

port  on  the  Caspian  Sea,1  and  ends,  for  the 
time  being,  at  Samarcand,2  followed  naturally 
the  route  which  offered  the  greatest  promise  of 
subsistence    by    the    way,    yet    for    the    first    144 

1  This  autumn  the  port  of  Usan  Ada  is  to  be  superseded  by 
that  of  Krasnovodsk,  and  the  terminus  of  the  Transcaspian 
railway  transferred  to  the  latter  place.  This  is  the  second 
port  which  the  Russians  have  abandoned  on  the  eastern 
coast  of  the  Caspian  Sea  ;  and  whether  they  will  benefit  by 
the  present  change  remains  to  be  seen,  for,  as  Charles 
Marvin  tells  us,  "the  Asiatic  side  of  the  Caspian  is  simply 
a  sandy  fiat  with  roadsteads  far  apart,  which  lie  open  to 
every  wind.  Storms  from  the  west  are  particularly  dreaded, 
and  the  moment  the  breeze  begins  to  blow  from  this  quarter, 
the  vessels  stand  out  to  sea,  and  remain  in  deep  water  till 
it  changes  again." 

2  The  main  line  is  being  extended  to  Tashkend  through 
a  very  difficult  mountainous  country,  and  a  branch  which 
is  also  under  construction,  leaving  the  main  line  at  Kho- 
kent,  links  up  Khokand  and  Marghilan  with  Samarcand, 
and  terminates  at  Andijan.  The  cost  of  Russia's  railways 
in  Central  Asia  must  have  been  enormous.  "  From  a 
financial  point  of  view,"  Mr.  Charles  Marvin  writes,  "Russia 
and  India  have  had  one  drawback  in  common  in  the 
matter  of  railway  construction  :  a  large  proportion  of  the 
lines  have  been  built  for  strategic  purposes.  But  Russia 
has  had  three  other  drawbacks,  from  which  India  has  been 
exempt.  All  her  railways  have  been  badly  constructed, 
all  of  them  badly  financed,  and  all  of  them  badly  worked." 


RUSSIA'S   POSITION   IN   CENTRAL  ASIA  85 

miles  the  view  from  the  windows  of  the  train, 
as  it  steams  towards  the  south-east,  chills  the 
traveller  with  its  lifeless  monotony.  On  either 
hand,  dotted  here  and  there  with  stunted  trees, 
stretch  vast,  unbroken  plains,  utterly  barren  and 
bare,  except  after  rain,  when  grass  springs  up  with 
extraordinary  rapidity,  only  to  fade  and  die  away 
with  equal  suddenness — plains  which,  in  their  brief 
moments  of  vivid  vitality,  are  the  home  of  nomad 
tribes  and  their  flocks  of  sheep,  but,  for  the  rest 
of  the  year,  an  empty  desert. 

Then  follow,  for  240  miles,  separated  from 
each  other  by  stretches  of  sand,  the  oases  of 
Kizil  Avat,  Akhal  Tekke  and  Atak,  each  a  long, 
narrow  belt  of  cultivation,  formed  by  numerous 
small  streams,  which  streams,  often  dry,  all  de- 
scend from  the  mountains  of  Khorassan  on  the 
south-west  of  the  oases,  and  lose  themselves  in 
the  deserts  which  bound  them  on  the  north-east 
Here,  indeed,  we  have  a  poor,  but  stationary 
population,  its  narrow  territories  yielding  barely 
enough  for  its  simple  wants  ;  and  the  line  which 
brings  the  soldiers  of  the  Czar  into  those  pleasant 
patches  of  habitable  land,  must  carry,  too,  all  that 
is    necessary  to  their  maintenance.       Here,  again, 


86  RUSSIA'S   POSITION    IN   CENTRAL   ASIA 

it  is  no  defect  in  the  soil  which  sets  a  limit  to 
the  gifts  of  Nature ;  the  barren  tracts  on  either 
side  the  oases'  belt  are  as  susceptible  of  cultiva- 
tion as  those  oases  themselves,  and  so,  too,  is  the 
wilderness  previously  described ;  but  the  water, 
which  could  develop  their  latent  fertility,  is  lack- 
ing, has  always  been  lacking,  and  will  continue 
to  be  lacking  to  the  end  of  the  chapter.  The 
mountains  which  empty  the  cloud  storehouse  of 
the  monsoon,  send  their  mighty  streams  south- 
ward, and  only  little  rills  trickle  down  their 
northern  declivities.  It  would  require  a  Ganges 
or  an  Indus,  or  both,  to  give  Central  Asia  a 
chance  of  ever  rivalling  India  in  fertility ; 1  and 
though,  as  we  are  sometimes  told,  it  may  be 
within  the  power  of  human  science  to  turn  the 
course  of  the  Nile,  no  one  has  ever  ventured  to 
suggest  that  the  Russians  can  compel  the  mon- 
soon to  blow  on  their  side  the  Hindu  Kush, 
instead  of  on  ours. 

1  "  The  two  thousand  miles  we  have  marched  between 
the  Caspian  and  the  Indus  have  certainly  convinced  us 
that  India  is  the  garden  of  Asia,  and  that  only  in  India — 
Herat  and  Badghis  are  but  oases — are  water  and  shade  the 
rule  and  not  the  exception." — Special  Correspondent  of  The 
Times  with  the  Boundary  Commission,  1885. 


RUSSIA'S   POSITION    IN    CENTRAL   ASIA   87 

Beyond  Atak  the  Transcaspian  Railway  crosses 
the  Tejend  River,  and  runs  due  east  for  100  miles 
through  a  fresh  desert  to  Merv  ;  that  oasis — 170 
miles  from  the  Oxus — left  behind,  the  line  takes  a 
nearly  northerly  direction,  and  enters  the  country 
of  the  moving  sands — firm  in  spring,  when  bound 
together  by  the  grass  which  starts  into  brief 
existence  after  the  melting  of  the  snows  ;  at  every 
other  season5  in  constant  motion,  sweeping  back- 
wards and  forwards  in  wild  unrest,  here  piling 
up  ridges,  there  scooping  out  hollows,  and  blow- 
ing in  deadly  clouds  across  the  Oxus,  whose 
present  bed  they  are  perpetually  changing,  whilst 
the  old  bed  by  which  in  former  times  it  sought 
the  Sea  of  Aral,  and  that  by  which  it  once  flowed 
into  the  Caspian,  remain  as  lasting  memorials  of 
their  resistless  might.  Even  the  narrow  railway 
track  is  only  kept  open  by  incessant  vigilance  and 
labour,  and  no  human  power  can  suffice  to  chain 
the  Oxus  to  a  permanent  bed,  or  to  save  it  from 
being  split  up  into  a  varying  number  of  shallow 
channels,  which  can  neither  be  bridged  nor  yet 
navigated,  except  by  vessels  of  small  size  and 
draught.  The  much-vaunted  Russian  Oxus  flotilla 
consists  of  two  little  steamers  and  a  few  flats,  none 


88  RUSSIA'S   POSITION   IN   CENTRAL  ASIA 

of  which  can  carry  more  than  300  men.  Whilst  on 
the  left  bank  of  the  Oxus  the  moving  sands  have 
long  held  undisputed  sway,  on  its  right  bank 
their  destructive  activity  is  still  at  work.  Beyond 
the  narrow  strip  of  cultivation  which  always 
marks  the  course  of  a  stream,  one  catches 
glimpses,  here  and  there,  of  the  roofs  of  villages 
piercing  the  sand  drifts,  telling  of  the  once  fruit- 
ful soil  on  which  only  recently,  perhaps,  men 
toiled  and  reaped  ;  whilst  a  sadder  sight  still  are 
the  fields  in  process  of  devastation,  and  the  in- 
habited dwellings  up  whose  walls  the  ruthless  foe 
is   silently   creeping. 

Issuing  at  last  from  this  perishing  region,  the 
train  pursues  its  way  for  another  236  miles  to 
Samarcand,  through  the  comparatively  fertile 
valley  of  the  Zarafshan  ;  though,  even  here,  con- 
stantly recurring  expanses  of  untilled  land  bear 
witness  to   the   paucity  of  water. 

Now,  this  great  railway,  as  I  have  already  said, 
has  been  constructed  through  the  least  barren 
portion  of  Russia's  Central  Asian  dominions  ;  it 
follows,  therefore,  that  the  vast  regions  lying 
beyond  the  traveller's  line  of  sight  must  be  still 
less  capable  of  supporting  a  population  than  those 


RUSSIA'S   POSITION   IN   CENTRAL   ASIA  89 

of  which  he  can  judge  from  actual  observation. 
Mr.  C.  E.  Biddulph,  an  Indian  civilian,  who  made 
the  journey  within  the  last  few  years,  estimates 
the  cultivable  land  throughout  the  whole  of  Cen- 
tral Asia  at  2*2  per  cent,  whilst  the  American 
traveller  Schuyler  puts  the  proportion  for  Tur- 
kestan at  if  per  cent.  The  two  provinces  of 
Transcaspia  and  Turkestan,  taken  together,  cover 
1,500,000  square  miles,  an  area  only  one-sixth  less 
than  that  of  India  and  Burma  combined  ;  but 
whereas  the  latter  countries  contain  290,000,000 
inhabitants,  Russian  Central  Asia  counts  only 
6,400,000,  and  this  proportion  of  45  to  1  can  never 
be  altered  in  our  rival's  favour,  because  the  limits 
of  India's  productive  power  are  capable  of  almost 
indefinite  expansion,  whilst  those  of  Central  Asia 
have  practically  been  already  reached.  But  the 
same  causes  which  will  continue  to  keep  down  the 
population  in  the  two  provinces  to  about  its 
present  level,  will  stand  in  the  way  of  any  con- 
siderable addition  being  made  to  the  41,000 
troops  1  of  all  arms  of  which  their  Russian  garri- 

1  In  calculating  the  true  strength  of  the  Russian  garrison 
in  Central  Asia,  as  in  judging  of  that  of  the  British  garrison 
in    India,    large  deductions   must   be   made    for    sickness. 


9o   RUSSIA'S    POSITION    IN    CENTRAL   ASIA 

son  is  now  composed,  and  we  may  dismiss  from 
our  minds  the  fear  that  Central  Asia  can  ever  be 
used  as  a  base  whence  to  attempt  the  conquest 
of  India. 

The  Russians,  it  is  true,  are  occupying  more 
and  more  territory,  year  by  year,  exactly  as  we 
ourselves  are  doing,  but  the  stream  of  advance 
grows  shallower  as  it  flows,  dwindling  down  to  a 
handful  of  men  in  the  terrible  mountain  region 
through  which  it  is  our  latest  craze  to  look  for 
their  approach,1  and  if  their  Government  is  ever 
mad  enough  to  embark  on  the  grand  adventure 
into  which  we  suppose  it  to  be  burning  to  rush, 
everything  connected  with  that  adventure — arms, 
ammunition,  provisions  and  men — must  come 
direct  from  the  Caucasus,  to  concentrate — where? 
Not  at  Herat,  even  if  Herat  were  already  in  their 
hands.  That  coveted  province  proves  little  less 
disappointing  than  the  "  Garden  of  Central  Asia  " 

Epidemics,  at  all  times  rife  in  Central  Asia,  have  of  late 
years  assumed  most  malignant  forms,  and  the  troops,  as 
well  as  the  native  population,  have  suffered  and  are  still 
suffering  severely. 

1  The  British  members  of  the  Commission  which  met  last 
year  to  delimitate  the  Pamirs,  had  to  cut  down  their  escort 
to  ten  men,  owing  to  transport  and  commissariat  difficulties. 


RUSSIA'S  POSITION   IN   CENTRAL  ASIA  91 

when  viewed,  not  through  the  eyes  of  the  weary, 
thirst-tortured  traveller,  escaping  with  joy  from 
the  horrors  of  the  desert,  and  judging  of  the  whole 
country  by  the  small  portion  of  which  he  catches 
fleeting  glimpses,1  but  through  those  of  a  soldier 
and  diplomatist,  who  spent  months  within  its 
boundaries,  and  enjoyed  unrivalled  opportunities 
of  making  himself  acquainted  with  every  part  of  it. 
"  The  Herat  Valley,"  so  wrote  Sir  West 
Ridgeway  in  his  article  on  the  New  Afghan 
Frontier,  in  the  October,  1889,  number  of  the 
Nineteenth  Century,  "  the  Herat  Valley  is  by  no 
means  a  smiling  garden,  flowing  with  milk  and 
honey.  Surrounded  by  barren  mountains,  on  the 
lower  slopes  of  which  are  a  few  scattered  hamlets, 
its  central  part,  through  which  the  river  runs, 
contains  the  only  valuable  and  culturable  land. 
A  strip  on  each  side  of  the  river,  varying  from 
two  to  five  miles  in  width,  is  fairly  well  cultivated, 

1  Vambery's  glowing  vision  of  the  future  harvests  of  the 
Badghis  and  Herat  provinces  under  European  rule,  was 
based  upon  the  unusual  number  of  streams  by  which  they 
are  traversed.  Doubtless  he  saw  those  streams  full  of  water, 
and  forgot  that  all  the  smaller  ones  are  empty,  except  when 
the  snow  is  melting  in  the  mountains. 


92  RUSSIA'S   POSITION    IN   CENTRAL   ASIA 

and  as  the  villages  and  fields  here  lie  close  to- 
gether, and  the  principal  road  runs  through  them, 
the  hurried  traveller  may  be  excused  if  he 
generalises  from  what  he  sees,  and  imagines 
that  the  whole  valley  is  equally  cultivated. 
But  if  he  were  to  follow  one  of  the  roads  along 
the  outskirts  of  the  cultivation,  he  would  be  soon 
undeceived.  As  for  fertility,  if  I  remember  rightly, 
the  average  yield  of  the  cultivated  land  is  only 
fivefold,  or,  in  exceptionally  fertile  spots,  tenfold. 
Trees  are  few  and  far  between,  for  it  is  a  rule, 
whenever  Herat  is  threatened,  to  cut  down  every 
tree  within  a  radius  of  five  miles.  The  popula- 
tion is  poor  and  struggling,  while  Herat  city 
is  a  mass  of  mud  hovels,  sheltering  some  5,000 
souls,  exclusive  of  the  garrison."  1 

But  were  this  picture  as  false  as  it  is  true,  it 
would   make  no  difference  to  the  solution  of  the 

1  "  The  exaggerated  fears  of  Russian  power  and  intrigue 
entertained  by  Ellis,  McNeil,  Burnes  and  Wade,  the  flame 
of  which  was  communicated  by  them  to  the  British  and 
Indian  Governments,  invested  Herat  with  a  fictitious  import- 
ance wholly  incommensurate  with  the  strength  of  the  place, 
and  its  position  in  regard  to  Candahar  and  the  Indus.  To 
speak  of  the  integrity  of  the  place  as  of  vital  importance  to 
British  India  was  a  hyperbole  so  insulting  to  common  sense 


RUSSIA'S   POSITION   IN   CENTRAL  ASIA  93 

problem  I  am  discussing ;  for,  as  I  have  pointed 
out,  again  and  again,  the  object  for  which  con- 
centration is  practised — viz.  the  massing  of  troops 
for  a  combined  attack  upon  an  enemy — can  never, 
either  at  Herat  or  elsewhere,  be  practised  by- 
Russia  in  an  advance  upon  India. 

Let  her  push  forward  her  railway  as  she  may, 
and  endow  it  with  fourfold  the  carrying  power 
which  I  have  shown  it  would  really  possess 
there  will  yet  be  some  point  at  which  it  must  end  ; 
that  point,  whatever  its  name,  "  a  mere  mass  of 
mud  hovels,"  surrounded  by  just  as  much  culti- 
vated land  as  will,  in  good  years,  feed  its  scanty 
population  ;  and  beyond  that  point  will  lie  moun- 
tains or  desert,  or  both,  with  their  inexorable 
refusal  to  permit  of  the  passage  of  troops,  except 
in  very  small  bodies.  The  real  truth  of  the  situa- 
tion as  determined  by  Nature,  however  much 
delimitation  commissions  may  trace  new  bound- 
aries on  their  maps,  is  that  the  Asiatic  Empires  of 

as  scarcely  to  need  refutation,  and  which  ignorance  of  the 
countries  west  of  the  Indus,  and  inexperience  of  military 
operations  in  the  East,  could  alone  palliate." — Sir  Henry 
Durand,  K.C.S.I.,  C.B.,  Royal  Engineers,  at  one  time 
Military  Member  of  the  Viceroy's  Council,  and  afterwards 
Lieutenant-Governor  of  the  Punjab. 


94  RUSSIA'S    POSITION    IN    CENTRAL   ASIA 

Great  Britain  and  Russia  practically  cannot  meet. 
Let  us  draw  the  line  that  is  to  divide  them  where 
we  will,  on  either  side  of  it  will  lie  uninhabitable 
wastes.  To  put  an  extreme  case,  one  which  in 
my  judgment  will  never  occur.  Supposing  Afghan- 
istan to  have  been  entirely  subdued  by  Russia, 
and  that  she  and  we  have  decided  that  our 
common  frontier  shall  be  drawn  along  the  eastern 
foot  of  the  Suliman  Mountains — at  the  southern 
extremity  of  that  line,  her  last  outpost  of  any 
strength  would  be  at  Quetta  and  ours  at  Jacoba- 
bad,  separated  from  each  other  by  202  miles  of 
painful  and  difficult  road,  whilst,  at  its  northern 
extremity,  81  miles  of  formidable  passes  would 
separate  Peshavvur  from  Jellalabad,1  which,  for 
argument's  sake,  I  will  assume  to  be  as  strongly 
fortified  and  garrisoned  as  Quetta.  But  when 
we  talk  of  strongly  garrisoned,  we  must  interpret 
the  adverb  according  to  our  experience  of  what 
can  be  done  in  that  line,  in  a  poor  country,  at  a 
considerable  distance  from  the  troops'  only  base 
of  supplies  ;  and  though  we  may  have  erected  at 

1  Jellalabad  lies  in  the  only  valley  of  any  extent  between 
Kabul  and  Peshawur,  and  is  the  one  spot  on  that  route 
suitable  for  the  erection  of  a  place  d'ar/nes. 


RUSSIA'S    POSITION    IN    CENTRAL   ASIA  95 

Quetta  fortifications  capable  of  holding  15,000 
men,  3,000  to  4,000  is  the  maximum  we  are  able 
to  keep  there  permanently.  Could  the  Russians 
do  more,  or  anything  like  as  much,  with  their 
true  base  at  Tiflis,  1,748  miles  away,  three  times 
farther  off  than  ours,  taking  the  country  beyond 
Multan  as  the  granary  which  feeds  Quetta  to-day  ? 
Thus  limited,  neither  the  garrison  of  Quetta,  nor 
that  of  Jellalabad  could  contribute  anything  to 
a  Russian  army  on  its  march  to  India.  Come 
when  it  may,  that  army  must  needs  start  from 
the  Caucasus,  and  will  find  itself  under  the  inex- 
orable necessity  of  hurrying  forward  with  the 
least  possible  delay.  And  what  is  the  line  of 
communication  on  which  it  would  have  to  de- 
pend ?  A  single-lined  railway,  liable  at  one  part 
of  its  course  to  be  interrupted  by  sand,  at  another 
by  snow,  at  a  third  by  floods  ;  exposed  for 
hundreds  of  miles  to  the  danger  of  a  flank  attack 
from  Persia  (unless  I  am  to  concede  that  Persia, 
too,  has  become  a  Russian  province),  and  for  other 
hundreds  to  the  raids  of  the  Afghan  tribes,  who 
would  fly  to  arms  at  once  if  they  saw  their  con- 
queror involved  in  a  life-and-death  struggle  with 
ourselves  ;  and  beyond  the  railway,  roads  running 


96  RUSSIA'S   POSITION   IN   CENTRAL   ASIA 

through  narrow  defiles,  and  over  a  waterless,  burn- 
ing desert — roads  on  which,  at  the  very  outset,  the 
terrible  transport  difficulty  would  be  awaiting 
them  in  the  shape  of  endless  stores,  choking  the 
little  terminus,  and  clamouring  for  camels  and 
mules  and  ponies  to  carry  them  on. 

There  are  British  officers,  even  British  generals, 
who  still  profess  to  believe  that  India  can  be  in- 
vaded from  Central  Asia  ;  but  there  are  also 
Russian  military  men  who  do  not  hesitate  to 
avow  that  such  an  invasion  is  impossible.  That 
very  Skobeleff  who,  when  ignorant  of  all  the 
conditions  of  the  problem,  wrote  so  glibly  of 
organizing  "  masses  of  Asiatic  cavalry,1  and  hurl- 
ing them  into  India  under  the  banner  of  blood 
and  pillage,  as  a  vanguard  as  it  were,  thus  re- 
viving the  times  of  Tamerlane,"  a  little  later, 
when  his  judgment  had  been  cleared  and  chas- 
tened by  the  difficulties  which  he  had  had  to 
overcome  before  he  could  provision  and  move  a 

1  It  is  a  curious  commentary  on  Skobeleff's  "masses  of 
Asiatic  cavalry"  that,  according  to  Major  J.  Wolfe  Murray, 
"three  very  modest  squadrons  of  irregulars,  aggregating 
310  rank  and  file,  is  all  the  Turcoman  cavalry  that  Russia 
possesses." 


RUSSIA'S   POSITION    IN   CENTRAL   ASIA   97 

tiny  force  against  the  Tekke  Turcomans,  used 
very  different  language.  "  I  do  not  understand," 
so  he  spoke  to  Mr.  Charles  Marvin,  who  inter- 
viewed him  at  St.  Petersburg  in  1882, — "  I  do  not 
understand  military  men  in  England  writing  in 
the  Army  and  Navy  Gazette,  which  I  take  in  and 
read,  of  a  Russian  invasion  of  India.  I  should 
not  like  to  be  the  commander  of  such  an  expedi- 
tion. The  difficulties  would  be  enormous.  To 
subjugate  Akhal  we  had  only  5,000  men,  and 
needed  20,000  camels.  To  get  that  transport, 
we  had  to  send  to  Orenberg,  to  Khiva,  to  Bok- 
hara, and  to  Mangishlak  for  animals.  The  trouble 
was  enormous.  To  invade  India,  we  should  need 
150,000  troops:  60,000  to  enter  India  with,  and 
90,000  to  guard  the  communications.  If  5,000 
men  needed  20,000  camels,  what  would  150,000 
need,  and  where  could  we  get  the  transport  ? 
We  should  require  vast  supplies,  for  Afghanistan 
is  a  poor  country,  and  could  not  feed  60,000  men, 
and  we  should  have  to  fight  the  Afghans  as  well 
as  you."  x 

1  Colonel  Grodekoff,  whom  Skobeleff  employed  to  collect 
supplies  for  the  Akhal  Tekke  campaign,  protested  even  more 
emphatically  than  his  chief  against  the  mischievous  belief 

B.F.  H 


98    RUSSIA'S    POSITION    IN    CENTRAL  ASIA 

Skobeleff  might  have  added  the  factor  of  time 
to  the  calculation  by  which  he  turned  into  ridi- 
cule the  scheme  he  himself  had  once  favoured, 
and  have  asked,  since  it  had  taken  two  months 
to  collect  two  and  a  half  months'  supplies  for 
5,ooo  men,  and  six  months  to  bring  together 
20,000  camels,  how  many  years  would  be  needed 
to  lay  in  the  stores  and  organize  the  transport  of 
150,000  men  for  six,  or  nine,  or  twelve  months, 
or  any  other  period  which  might  be  consumed  in 
moving  them  from  their  base  to  their  goal  ?  and 
also  the  factor  of  wear  and  tear,  except  that,  as, 
in  his  own  case,  the  wear  and  tear  had  amounted 
to  the  destruction  of  the  whole  of  his  beasts  of 
burden,  in  a  march  of  a  hundred  and  seventy 
miles  and  a  campaign  of  a  few  weeks,  no  increase 

that  Russia  meditated  an  invasion  of  India,  and  showed  at 
the  same  time  a  better  appreciation  of  the  resistance  which 
the  British  Indian  Empire  could  offer  to  its  foes.  "Look," 
he  said  to  Mr.  Marvin,  "at  the  enormous  difficulties  we 
encountered  in  overcoming  Geok  Tepe.  We  killed  20,000 
camels  during  the  campaign,  in  which  only  5,000  troops  were 
engaged.  We  should  need  300,000  men  to  invade  India, 
and  where  could  we  obtain  the  transport  and  supplies  for 
such  a  number?  It  would  be  impossible  for  us  to  march 
such  an  army  to  India.  Rest  assured  that  a  Russian  invasion 
of  India  is  an  impossibility." 


RUSSIA'S    POSITION    IN   CENTRAL   ASIA    99 

in  distance,  or  time  could  make  the  resultant  any- 
worse  than  he  had  found  it. 

That  there  is  nothing  exceptional  in  Skobeleff' s 
experience  will  be  apparent  to  all  who  remember 
how  the  whole  of  the  transport  provided  for  the 
Indian  Government's  grand  mobilisation  scheme 
disappeared  in  our  own  little  wars,  twice  over, 
between  1889  and  1895,  as  well  as  a  large  propor- 
tion of  the  ordinary  transport,  as  evidenced  by 
the  sums  sanctioned  during  the  same  period  "  for 
additional  transport  mules,"  or  "  for  increased 
purchases  of  transport  animals  to  complete 
establishment  due  to  casualties,  etc." 

The  effect  of  this  phenomenon  upon  the 
mutual  relations  of  Great  Britain  and  Russia  is 
simply  to  render  a  collision  between  them,  on  any 
important  scale,  altogether  impossible.  Neither 
of  them,  when  engaged  in  a  hostile  advance 
against  the  territory  of  the  other,  could  rely  ex- 
clusively, or  to  any  great  extent,  upon  railways. 
Transport,  therefore,  and  a  great  deal  of  it,  would 
be  essential  to  both  ;  and  that  transport,  if  pro- 
curable, which  I  dispute,  must  perish  by  thousands 
and  hundreds  of  thousands  on  the  enormous 
march  which  it  would  have  to  perform  from  the 


ioo  RUSSIA'S  POSITION    IN    CENTRAL  ASIA 

point  where  it  had  been  collected,  to  the  point 
where  its  services  would  be  required  by  the 
troops,  whether  the  original  area  of  collection 
had  embraced  the  whole  of  India,  or  the  Asiatic 
territories  of  the  Czar. 

Of  course  Russia  is  not  without  her  forward 
school  of  politicians,  the  advanced  members  of 
which  are  just  as  sanguine  in  their  expectations, 
and  as  deaf  to  the  teachings  of  experience  as 
their  Anglo-Indian  rivals. 

General  Soboleff,  for  instance,  considered  that 
it  ought  to  be  as  easy  for  his  countrymen  to 
invade  India  in  the  nineteenth  century,  as  it  was 
for  Nadir  Shah  in  the  eighteenth,  and  was  quite 
at  one  with  Colonel  Mark  Bell  in  believing  that 
there  would  be  no  great  difficulty  in  maintaining 
a  large  body  of  troops  in  Afghanistan,  though 
he  wisely  abstained  from  fixing  their  number, 
or  attempting  to  show  how  they  were  to  be 
supplied.1 

1  Colonel  Bell  calculates  that  "  Afghanistan  can  (now) 
feed  within  its  borders  an  armed  force  of  190,000  men" — 
(in  1838-42,  and  again  in  1878-80,  we  found,  to  our  cost, 
that  it  could  not  feed  10,000) — "  that  within  five  years  the 
country  could,  at  the  most  moderate  computation,  bear  the 
burden  of  supporting  250,000  foreigners,  and  within  ten  years, 


RUSSIA'S    POSITION   IN   CENTRAL  ASIA  101 

I  have  dealt  with  these  fallacies  so  often  and 
so  fully,  that  there  is  no  need  to  go  back  upon 
them  here.  My  object  in  the  present  chapter 
has  been  to  investigate  the  resources  of  Central 
Asia,  viewed  as  the  base  for  an  invasion  of 
India,  and  I  think  I  may  claim  to  have  shown 
that  no  great  force  could  be  equipped  in  Turkestan, 
or  in  Transcaspia,  and  that  we  may  regard  the 
spread  of  Russia's  power,  eastward  and  south- 
ward, with  perfect  equanimity,  so  far  as  the 
safety  of  India  is  concerned.  How  we  must 
regard  her  advance  from  the  point  of  view  of  the 
maintenance  of  our  authority  over  that  country, 
and  of  our  engagements  to  the  Ruler  of  Afghan- 
istan, are  weighty  questions  which  will  find  their 
place  in  my   final  chapter. 

This  chapter  would  be  incomplete  without  a 
few  words  with  regard  to  the  province  which 
I  have  accepted  as  Russia's  base,  in  the  conduct 

500,000.  The  latter  figures  require  but  500,000  additional 
acres,  or  100  square  miles,  5o00th  of  its  area  of  average  land, 
to  be  sown  with  wheat  /  " 

The  average  land  of  Afghanistan  grows  nothing  but  rocks 
and  stones,  and  he  will  be  a  clever  man  who  can  discover 
500,000,  or  5,000  acres  of  uncultivated  and  culturable  land 
in  its  narrow  valleys. 


io2  RUSSIA'S  POSITION    IN   CENTRAL   ASIA 

of  all  operations  directed  against  Afghanistan 
or  India,  and  a  brief  description  of  the  army 
from  which  it  is  generally  assumed  that  the 
troops  engaged  in  such  operations  would  be 
drawn. 

The  Caucasus,  compared  with  India,  is  in- 
significant in  population  and  resources.  Its 
chief  town,  Tiflis,  is  connected  with  Baku,  on 
the  western  coast  of  the  Caspian,  by  a  single- 
lined  railway  341  miles  long,  with  stations  at 
great  distances  apart. 

The  cost  of  this  railway,  including  rolling 
stock,  was  no  less  than  .£10,000  per  mile  ;  yet 
the  accommodation  for  passengers  which  it 
affords  is  very  limited,  and  should  it  at  any 
time  be  used  for  the  conveyance  of  a  large 
number  of  troops,  with  their  baggage  and  stores, 
suitable  vehicles  would  have  to  be  provided. 

Carelessly  laid,  the  line  constantly  requires 
repairing.  Last  winter,  for  instance,  so  many  of 
its  bridges  were  destroyed  by  floods,  that  for  a 
considerable  time  much  of  the  traffic  had  to  be 
carried  by  a  circuitous  route  to  the  port  of 
Novorosiska  in  Circassia.  As  the  railway  ad- 
vances   eastward,    the    region     grows    more    and 


RUSSIA'S    POSITION    IN    CENTRAL   ASIA  103 

more  arid,  until,  on  approaching  the  Caspian, 
it  becomes  a  desert,  interspersed  with  salt-lakes, 
and  where  the  heat  is  terrific.  In  this  desert 
stands  Baku,  the  port  where  the  troops  destined 
for  the  invasion  of  India  would  be  detrained. 
Here  rain  falls  so  rarely  that  drinking  water 
has  to  be  brought  by  steamers  all  the  way 
from  the  Volga.  The  passage  of  the  Caspian 
occupies  from  twenty-four  to  thirty  hours,  and, 
owing  to  the  shallow,  shelving  nature  of  the 
eastern  shore  of  that  great  inland  sea,  none 
but  small  vessels  of  light  draught  can  ap- 
proach the  quays  of  Usan  Ada,  the  present 
starting  point  of  the  Transcaspian  railway. 
In  addition  to  this  serious  drawback,  the  eastern 
coast  of  the  Caspian  suffers,  like  the  western, 
from  great  scarcity  of  water,  and  condensing 
machinery  on  a  very  large  scale  would  have  to 
be  established  there,  before  the  first  step  towards 
an  advance  upon  India  could  be  taken.  These 
preparations  must  prove  so  tedious,  that,  coupled 
with  the  defective  character  of  the  railway  and 
the  difficulty  of  disembarkation,  they  would  al- 
most suffice  to  wreck  the  expedition  at  the  out- 
set.    In    war,  there  is  nothing    more  costly   than 


io4  RUSSIA'S   POSITION   IN   CENTRAL  ASIA 

delay,  as  the  Russians  proved  in  1878-79,  when 
the  stores  collected  at  Tchikishliar  for  the  use 
of  the  expedition  against  the  Turcomans  of 
Dengeel  Tepe  were  eaten  up  by  the  waiting 
troops  almost  as  fast  as  they  could  be  brought 
together ;  and  the  camels,  arriving  in  twenties 
and  thirties,  had  at  once  to  be  sent  to  the  out- 
posts to  fill  the  gaps  which  death  had  already 
made  in  the  transport  train.1  No  wonder  that 
when  the  force  moved  at  last,  it  was  only  to 
march  to  almost  complete  annihilation. 

If  on  this  occasion  it  had  taken  six  months 
to  provide  two  months' supplies  for  15,000  men, 
and  if  twelve  months  were  needed  to  place  25,000 
men  on  the  further  side  of  the  Caspian,  how 
long  would  it  take  to  assemble  at  Usan  Ada 
the  150,000  men,  with  so  different  a  transport 
and  equipment,  that  would  be  required  to  attack 
us  in  India,  or  even  the  60,000  or  70,000  which, 

1  The  waste  of  animal  life  has  been  almost  as  appalling 
in  Central  Asia  as  in  India.  In  the  Khiva  Expedition  no 
less  than  25,000  camels  were  used  up.  The  Go/os,  referring 
to  this  terrible  mortality,  remarks  :  "  It  is  obvious  that  th  e 
people  must  have  been  almost  ruined  by  this  waste  of  their 
resources."  See  Marvin's  Disastrous  Campaig7i  against 
the  Turkomans. 


RUSSIA'S   POSITION  IN   CENTRAL  ASIA  105 

with  so  long  a  line  of  communications  to  guard, 
would  be  barely  sufficient  to  attempt  the  con- 
quest of  Afghanistan  ? 

The  quiet  consideration  of  these  questions  must 
surely  convince  all  military  men  that  the  Russian 
difficulties  would  begin  on  the  western  side  of  the 
Caspian,  and  an  inquiry  into  the  numbers  and 
organization  of  the  army  of  the  Caucasus  must 
still  further  shake  their  confidence  in  her  power  to 
enter  upon  undertakings  of  such  vast  magnitude, 
much  less  to  carry  them  to  a  triumphant  conclu- 
sion. 

The  estimated  war  strength  of  that  army  is 
200,000  men  and  388  guns.  70,000  of  the  troops 
belong  to  the  Regular  Army,  50,000  to  the  Reserve, 
30,000  are  Georgian  and  Imeritian  Irregulars,  and 
50,000  Cossacks  drawn  from  settlements  north  of 
the  Caucasus.  The  70,000  Regulars,  after  furnish- 
ing the  garrison  of  Transcaspia,  are  distributed 
between  Batoum,  Tiflis,  Kars  and  other  fortified 
towns  on  the  Turkish  and  Persian  frontiers,  whence 
they  could  not  be  withdrawn  to  take  part  in 
an  invasion  of  India  unless  replaced  at  once  by 
other  Regulars. 

The    Reservists   are   merely    military   colonists, 


106   RUSSIA'S    POSITION    IN    CENTRAL   ASIA 

men  who  after  five  years'  service  receive  a  grant 
of  land,  where  they  settle  down,  marry,  and  soon 
forget  the  little  knowledge  that  they  had  acquired 
in  the  ranks,  for  even  the  regular  troops  are  sub- 
jected to  very  light  discipline,  and  are  little  better 
than  militia. 

As  the  80,000  Irregulars  fall,  of  course,  far  short 
of  the  standard  of  efficiency  prevailing  among  the 
Regulars,1  it  is  obvious  that  the  Army  of  the 
Caucasus  is  not  a  very  formidable  force,  either  as 
regards  material,  discipline,  or  training. 

But  what,  from  our  point  of  view,  is  still  more 
satisfactory  is  the  fact  that,  whether  formidable  or 

1  "  Even  the  Regulars  have  very  few  parades,  and  abso- 
lutely no  pipeclay.  A  company  or  two  is  paraded  daily 
during  the  summer  months  for  rifle  practice  under  the 
Adjutant  and  Musketry  Instructor,  and  the  corps  is  assem- 
bled once  a  month  for  muster.  The  rest  of  the  time  the 
men  do  much  as  they  choose,  and  usually  either  work  at 
trades,  selling  the  produce  of  their  industry  at  a  sort  of 
market  held  every  Sunday  in  the  bazaar  of  the  town,  or  hire 
themselves  out  at  so  much  per  diem  to  private  individuals 
as  porters,  labourers,  etc." — Notes  on  the  Caucasus,  by 
Wanderer. 

These  remarks,  however,  do  not  apply  to  the  artillery,  the 
officers  of  which  are  well  trained,  the  men  specially  selected, 
and  the  guns  admirably  horsed  and  equipped. 


RUSSIA'S   POSITION    IN    CENTRAL  ASIA   107 

not,  it  cannot  safely  be  turned  against  us.  Sir 
William  Mansfield's  warning  to  us  not  to  forget 
that  India  was  a  recently  conquered  country,  and 
that  the  commonest  prudence  forbade  us  to  treat 
her  as  if  she  were  England,  for  the  purpose  of 
invading  Afghanistan,  or  of  sustaining  a  great 
conflict  with  Russia,  applies  with  equal  force  to 
the  relations  of  Russia  and  the  Caucasus.  That 
province,  also,  is  a  recently  conquered  country,  and 
its  hardy,  warlike  inhabitants,  after  a  struggle 
extending  over  many  years,  were  only  reduced  to 
submission  by  measures  of  terrible  severity,  the 
memory  of  which  must  still  rankle  in  their  minds. 
To  treat  her,  therefore,  as  though  she  were  Russia, 
for  the  purpose  of  invading  Afghanistan,  or  of 
sustaining  a  great  conflict  with  England,  would 
be  an  act  of  such  criminal  imprudence  that  no 
Russian  Government  is  ever  likely  to  commit 
it. 

It  comes,  then,  to  this  :  that,  though  the  food 
supplies  of  a  large  Russian  army  might  be 
furnished  by  Caucasia,  its  personnel  and  military 
stores  must  come  from  Europe,  which  throws 
back  its  true  base  to  the  Black  Sea  in  one  direc- 
tion and  to  Moscow  in  another,  and  deprives  the 


108  RUSSIA'S   POSITION   IN   CENTRAL  ASIA 

dream  of  a  Russian  invasion  of  India  of  the  last 

vestige  of  probability. 1 

1  "The  Russian  Empire,  which,  from  various  considera- 
tions, such  as  its  vast  area,  the  homogeneity  of  its  popula- 
tion and  their  stolid  patriotism,  is  impregnable  as  a 
defensive  power,  is  singularly  weak  for  offence.  The  very 
qualities  which  make  the  Russian  soldiery  so  formidable  at 
home  render  them  inefficient  abroad.  The  inferior  quality 
of  the  officers  and  generals  ;  the  indescribable  corruption 
which  makes  the  transport  and  commissariat  departments 
invariably  break  down  ;  the  want  of  communications,  and 
the  general  absence  in  staff  and  men  of  any  intelligent 
spirit — these  and  other  causes  render  the  Russian  armies, 
so  overwhelming  on  paper,  altogether  unreliable  for  offen- 
sive warfare."— Sir  Lepel  Griffin,  Nineteenth  Century, 
July,  1896. 


CHAPTER    V 

THE     ALTERNATIVES 

"  If  we  engage  ourselves  in  Afghanistan,  Russia  will  find 
us  in  the  hour  of  trial  impoverished  and  embarrassed.  If 
we  keep  out  of  Afghanistan,  Russia  will  find  us  in  the  hour 
of  trial  strong,  rich,  and  prosperous  in  India.  If  she  really 
wishes  us  ill,  she  must  naturally  desire  that  we  may  be  so 
infatuated  as  to  pursue  the  former  course.  But  it  is  for  us  to 
avoid  the  course  which  our  enemies,  if  we  have  any,  would 
desire  us  to  follow." — Sir  Richard  Temple,  M.P.,  formerly 
Member  of  the  Viceroy's  Council,  and  afterwards  Governor 
of  Bombay. 

"  What  would  be  an  act  of  prudence,  wisdom,  and  modera- 
tion at  a  time  when  we  are  successful,  would  certainly  be 
considered  by  the  tribes  on  our  border  as  an  act  of  weakness, 
if  undertaken  at  the  commencement  of  a  war." — Sir  Frede- 
rick {now  Lord)  Roberts.  Memorandum,  dated  Kabul, 
May  29th,  1880,  recommending  the  withdrawal  of  the  British 
forces  from  Kabul,  the  Khyber,  and  the  Kuram,  "  within 
our  original  frontier" 

I  MAY  now,  at  last,  claim  to  have  fully  estab- 
lished my  threefold  contention — that  a  Russian 
invasion  of  India  is  impossible ;  that  India's 
present  North- West  Frontier  is  unsound  and  in- 
defensible ;  and  that  the  price  we  are  paying 
for    the    maintenance     and     extension     of    that 

109 


no  THE   ALTERNATIVES 

Frontier,  is  nothing  less  than  the  impoverishment 
of  the  Indian  people,  and  the  sacrifice,  one  by 
one,  of  the  safeguards  essential  to  the  preserva- 
tion of  the  British  Indian  Empire. 

I  have  shown,  firstly,  that  Russia  possesses  in 
Central  Asia  no  base  for  the  organization  and 
supply  of  a  large  army ;  that  the  acquisition 
of  Afghanistan  would  not  furnish  her  with  one, 
and  that,  consequently,  she  is  to-day,  and  must 
continue  to  remain,  as  far  off  India,  for  all  pur- 
poses of  invasion,  as  she  was  when  she  finally 
established  herself  in  the  Caucasus,  nearly  forty 
years  ago,  except  in  so  far  as  the  construction 
of  the  Transcaspian  Railway  has  increased  her 
power  of  movement ;  that  that  railway,  single- 
lined,  and  hampered  throughout  long  stretches 
by  want  of  water,  is  open  for  hundreds  of  miles 
to  Persian  attack  ;  that,  were  it  completed  to 
Kandahar,  or  even  to  Kabul,  it  would,  in  its 
whole  length,  be  exposed  to  the  raids  of  Turco- 
man and  Afghan,  and  in  constant  danger  from 
sandstorm  or  snowstorm,  earthquake  or  flood  ; 
and  that  it  constitutes,  therefore,  too  precarious 
a  means  of  communication  for  any  commander 
to  feel    himself  justified   in    trusting   to  it  alone  ; 


THE   ALTERNATIVES  iti 

that,  if  its  rails  were  doubled,  it  could  not  relieve 
a  Russian  Government,  bent  on  the  invasion  of 
India,  of  the  necessity  of  organizing  a  transport 
train  at  some  point  or  other  ;  that  Central  Asia, 
and  Afghanistan  to  boot,  could  not  supply  the 
beasts  of  burden  that  would  be  required  to  move 
a  force  adequate  to  so  great  an  enterprise  ;  that 
their  numbers,  were  it  possible  to  obtain  them, 
would  render  the  task  of  feeding  them  utterly 
impossible  ;  and  that,  if  the  transport  difficulty 
could  be  overcome,  and  a  Russian  army  were 
really  to  make  its  way  through  Afghanistan, 
there  is  no  point  within  striking  distance  of 
British  territory  where  it  could  halt  to  concen- 
trate and  recruit ;  and  that  by  whatever  route 
it  might  elect  to  advance,  by  one  line  or  many, 
it  would  always  enter  India  in  a  succession  of 
very  small  bodies. 

I  have  shown,  secondly,  on  the  one  hand,  that 
the  old  Indus  Frontier  is,  by  nature,  so  excep- 
tionally strong  as  to  merit  the  epithet — invul- 
nerable ;  that  its  lines  of  communication,  both 
lateral  and  in  rear,  are  all  that  can  be  desired, 
and  that  behind  it  we  could  bring  our  resources 
to   bear   upon    an    invader    with    the    maximum 


ii2  THE   ALTERNATIVES 

of  certainty  and  speed,  and  be  in  a  position  to 
crush  him  at  the  least  possible  expense  and  loss 
to  ourselves,  and  the  greatest  possible  expense 
and  loss  to  him  ;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  that 
the  new  Frontier,  which  has  replaced  that  of 
the  Indus  Valley,  not  only  lacks  the  advantages 
attaching  to  the  latter,  but  has  actually  trans- 
formed them  into  dangers  ;  that  its  communi- 
cations are  bad  ;  that  all  our  attempts  to  render 
them  trustworthy  have  failed ;  that  the  forces 
by  which  it  is  held  are  out  of  proportion  small 
compared  to  the  area  and  character  of  the 
country,  and  the  temper  of  the  people l  they 
are  expected  to  control  ;  and  that  this  weakness 
is  not  accidental,  but  inherent  in  the  situation  — 

1  "  The  attitude  of  the  population  could  never  be  depended 
upon  in  an  emergency,  as  was  sufficiently  demonstrated  in 
the  interval  between  the  battles  of  Maiwand  and  Kandahar, 
when  the  very  stations  upon  our  line  of  rail  were  menaced 
by  bodies  of  marauders,  and  there  was  not  a  single  post 
throughout  the  whole  length  of  our  line  of  communications 
which  was  not  threatened  or  attacked  in  many  places  in 
localities  where  the  population  appeared  devoted  to  us,  and  it 
had  been  years  since  any  sort  of  disturbance  had  occurred? — 
MR.  C.  E.  BlDDULPH,  M.A.,  Political  officer  with  Sir 
Donald  Stewart's  and  General  P  hay  ris  forces  in  the  Afghan 
War  of  1878-79-80. 


THE   ALTERNATIVES  113 

the  cost  of  maintaining  troops  in  a  barren  coun- 
try at  a  great  distance  from  their  sources  of 
supply,  compelling  the  military  authorities  to 
cut  down  their  numbers  within  the  narrowest 
limits  compatible  with  the  performance  of  their 
duties  under  ordinary  circumstances,  and  to 
allow  no  margin  to  meet  emergencies. 

Lastly,  I  have  shown  that  the  Forward  Policy 
has  added  heavily  to  the  burden  of  taxation 
borne  by  our  Indian  fellow-subjects  ;  that  it  has 
diminished  the  wealth  out  of  which  taxation  is 
paid  ;  that  it  has  robbed  the  Provincial  Govern- 
ments of  their  balances ;  that  it  has  swallowed 
up  the  famine  fund  ;  that  it  has  aggravated  the 
exchange  difficulty  ;  that  it  has  filled  the  Native 
Army  with  untrustworthy  Pathans,  and  discon- 
tented soldiers  of  more  loyal  race  ;  that  it  has 
destroyed  that  proportion  between  the  British 
and  Native  armed  forces,  without  which  there 
can  be  no  safety  for  our  rule ;  and  that  it  has 
increased  the  Independent  Princes'  power  to 
injure  us — in  a  word,  that  the  cost  of  that  policy 
has  been  to  India  the  arrest  of  her  development 
and  the  impoverishment  of  her  inhabitants,  and 
to  Great  Britain  the  weakening  of  the  ties  which 

B.F.  I 


ii4  THE   ALTERNATIVES 

have  hitherto  attached  the  bulk  of  the  Indian 
people  to  her  rule,  and  a  marked  decrease  in 
her  ability  to  cope  either  with  civil,  or  military- 
disaffection. 

But  if  the  situation  which  the  Forward  Policy 
has  created  on  India's  North-West  Frontier  is 
dangerously  faulty,  both  in  its  external  and 
internal  aspects,  what  remains  for  reasonable 
men  to  do  but  to  make  up  their  minds  to  with- 
draw from  it  as  speedily  as  they  can  ?  Fortu- 
nately British  power  in  India  is  still  strong 
enough  to  bear  the  strain  of  a  retrograde  move- 
ment ;  what  we  have  twice  safely  accomplished 
under  the  pressure  of  immediate  military  and 
financial  necessity,  we  can  carry  through  a  third 
time,  of  our  own  freewill,  and  in  our  own  way, 
not  only  without  danger  to  our  authority  over 
our  legitimate  subjects,  but  without  losing  the 
respect  of  the  tribes,  or  the  goodwill  of  the 
Amir. 

This  assertion  may  sound  overbold,  but  it 
is  easy  of  proof.  In  the  first  place,  a  return  to 
the  Indus  Frontier  would  be  in  accordance  with 
the  wishes  of  all  thinking  and  well-informed 
natives  of  India,  and  with  the   interests   of  that 


THE   ALTERNATIVES  115 

vast  majority  who,  suffering  ignorantly  under 
our  present  Frontier  Policy,  would  know  only 
the  results  to  themselves  of  its  reversal. 

In  the  second  place,  though,  in  virtue  of  our 
occupation  of  their  territories,  we  exercise  a 
certain  control  over  the  doings  of  the  Inde- 
pendent Tribes,  we  are  really  less  strong  in  our 
relations  towards  them  than  we  were  when  we 
had  them  all  in  our  front,1  and  commanded  the 

1  "  Apart  from  the  question  of  a  more  formidable  foe, 
it  appears  to  be  believed  that  posts  pushed  up  the  passes 
would  lessen  the  chances  of  future  contests  with  the  unruly 
hill-tribes.  That  they  are  unruly  would  appear  an  excellent 
reason  for  keeping  them  in  our  front  rather  than  in  our 
rear.  Posts  separated  by  such  distances  and  such  inacces- 
sible country  can  exercise  no  influence  on  the  inhabitants 
between  ;  on  the  contrary,  we  should  be  offering  them  new 
and  potent  means  of  molesting  us.  I  fear  that  slenderly 
escorted  convoys  would  offer  irresistible  temptations  to  the 
half-starved  hill-tribes.  Such  a  measure,  in  time  of  war 
most  mischievous  as  multiplying  chances  of  disaster,  would 
be  in  time  of  peace  costly  and  burthensome,  for  it  would  not 
in  the  least  obviate  the  necessity  of  keeping  up  our  present  line 
of  Frontier  guards." — Sir  Edward  Hamley  on  India's 
North-  West  Frontier. 

The  Indian  Government  has  just  decided  to  strengthen 
the  garrisons  of  the  old  Frontier  stations  referred  to  by 
Sir  E.  Hamley. 


n6  THE   ALTERNATIVES 

mouths  of  the  passes  by  which  they  must  issue 
forth,  if  they  wanted  to  meddle  with  us  ;  and 
they  are  quick-witted  enough  to  be  aware  that, 
in  returning  to  our  former  position,  we  should 
forfeit  none  of  our  ability  to  punish  them  for 
bad  behaviour,  and  to  reward  them  for  good  ; 
wise  enough  to  know  that  they  would  still  be 
in  our  hands,  we  no  longer  in  theirs} 

In    the   third    place,   though    we   occupied    the 

1  "  Cases  of  Ghazism  {i.e.  murder)  along  the  Zhob  Valley, 
and  further  along  the  Frontier,  have  been  numerous  of  recent 
years.  .  .  .  The  moment  one  of  these  crimes  has  been 
committed  on  our  side  of  the  Frontier,  the  culprit  immedi- 
ately escapes  with  all  speed  over  the  boundary  into  Afghan- 
istan, where  he  finds  himself  in  a  sanctuary.  .  .  .  For 
months  on  end  our  officers,  both  civil  and  military,  are 
stationed  at  forts  entirely  cut  off  from  communication  with 
the  world  to  which  they  belong,  deprived  of  all  means 
of  amusements,  in  an  intolerable  climate,  with  very  little 
physical  comfort,  and  compelled  in  many  places  to  the 
accompaniment  of  an  escort  whenever  they  get  a  mile  from 
their  station."— See;  Sir  JOHN  DlCKSON-PoYNDER'S  article 
in  the  National  Review  for  September  last,  also  India's 
Scientific  Frontier,  pp.  62  and  63. 

Since  Sir  John  Dickson-Poynder's  visit  to  the  North- 
West  Frontier,  the  Government  of  India  have  prohibited 
officers  and  others  travelling  in  these  disturbed  districts 
"  without  special  permission  of  local  political  authorities." 


THE   ALTERNATIVES  117 

territories  of  the  Independent  Tribes  with  the 
Amir's  consent,  and  the  step  was  represented 
to  him  as  essential  to  the  success  of  our  plan 
for  the  protection  of  his  dominions  against  the 
ambitious  designs  of  Russia,  there  is  no  doubt 
that  that  consent  was  most  reluctantly  given, 
that  Abdur  Rahman  feels  aggrieved  by  the 
substitution  of  our  influence  for  his  over  men 
of  Afghan  blood,  and  that  he  sees  in  our  estab- 
lishment on  the  borders  of  Afghanistan  a  grave 
and  constant  menace  to  the  integrity  of  that 
kingdom.1  So  far,  then,  from  viewing  our 
retirement  with  disfavour,  he  would  welcome  it 
as  the  most  convincing  proof  that  we  could 
offer  him  of  our  friendly  intentions  towards  him 
and  his  people. 

I  shall  probably  be  told  that  Abdur  Rahman 
yielded  to  our  wishes  in  regard  to  the  Indepen- 
dent Tribes  in  exchange  for  a  promise  of  armed 

1  The  Times  of  India  draws  attention  to  the  fact  that 
"  The  Government  of  India  are  by  no  means  at  the  end 
of  their  trouble  with  the  Ameer  over  the  Mohmand  ques- 
tion," and  that  "  it  is  becoming  apparent  that  Afghan 
influence  is  being  extended  over  the  Eastern  clans  right 
up  to  the  border  of  Michni,"  where  the  Kabul  River  leaves 
the  hills  and  enters  into  the  Peshawar  Valley. 


n8  THE  ALTERNATIVES 

assistance  in  the  event  of  a  Russian  violation  of 
his  frontier,  and  that  he  will  be  reluctant  to 
relinquish  that  promise.  Personally,  I  believe 
that  Russia  would  find  it  harder  to  establish 
herself  in  Afghanistan  than  we  did  ;  that  the 
Amir  is  quite  capable  of  fighting  his  own  battles 
against  her ;  and  that  he  is  far  less  afraid  of 
her  than  of  us.  But  granting  that  the  Amir 
really  shares  our  dread  of  Russia,  and  values 
the  pledge  of  British  assistance  given  to  him  on 
his  accession  to  the  throne,  in  1880,  and,  probably, 
renewed  in  1893 — there  was  nothing  in  the  terms 
of  that  pledge,  at  least  as  originally  worded,  to 
bind  us  to  give  that  assistance  in  any  particular 
form,  certainly  nothing  to  prevent  our  placing 
ourselves  in  a  better  position  for  the  keeping  of 
our  promises  by  retiring  from  territories  which 
we  occupied  long  after  they  were  made. 

To  attempt  to  oust  the  Russians  from  Herat 
— supposing  them  to  have  occupied  that  city— by 
marching  an  Anglo-Indian  army  hundreds  of 
miles  through  Afghan  territory,  with  the  certainty 
of  embroiling  ourselves  with  the  people  whom 
we  had  come  to  aid,  would  be  no  less  futile 
than    dangerous  ;    and  yet  that   is  exactly   what 


THE   ALTERNATIVES  119 

we  are  sure  to  do,  or  to  attempt  to  do,  if  New 
Chaman  and  Quetta  are  still  in  our  hands.  To 
make  no  use  of  positions  for  which  India  has 
had  to  pay  so  high  a  price,  when  the  occasion  of 
turning  them  to  account  had  presented  itself, 
would  seem  culpable  waste,  and  only  experience 
could  convince  the  partisans  of  the  Forward 
Policy  that  the  possession  of  these  stepping- 
stones  would  do  little  to  facilitate  the  attainment 
of  their  distant  goal,  and  not  much  to  diminish 
the  immediate  expense  of  reaching  it,  since  the 
personnel  and  supplies  of  the  expeditionary  force 
would  still  have  to  be  brought  direct  from  India. 
No !  —  there  is  only  one  way  of  helping 
Afghanistan  without  arousing  her  jealousy,  and 
probably  in  the  end  justifying  her  suspicions,  and 
that  is  to  tell  Russia  that  we  intend  to  regard 
any  act  of  aggression  committed  against  the 
territory  of  our  ally  as  an  act  of  hostility 
directed  against  ourselves,  and  to  avenge  it  by 
attacking  her  in  her  only  vulnerable  points — her 
sea-board,  her  commerce,  and  her  fleet.1 

1  "  No  railways,  no  forts,  no  agreements  are  of  the  least 
use  unless  the  English  Government — I  do  not  mean  the 
Government  of   to-day  or  to-morrow — unless  the   English 


i2o  THE  ALTERNATIVES 

By  adopting  this  course  we  should  add  to  the 
three  lines  of  defence  already  protecting  our 
Indian  Empire  on  the  north-west,  yet  a  fourth, 
in  the  shape  of  a  truly  friendly  Afghanistan ;  and 
in  case  of  a  war  with  Russia,  and  perhaps  some 
other  European  power,  so  far  from  having  to 
increase  the  strength  of  India's  British  garrison, 
we  could  draw  boldly  upon  her  Native  troops 
to  meet  dangers  threatening  us  in  Eastern  Asia, 
or  Africa. 

The  probabilities,  however,  are  strong  that  a 
clear  declaration  of  our  intentions,  made  openly 
in  the  face  of  the  world,  would  suffice  to  safe- 
guard the  integrity  of  Afghanistan.  Russia  may 
covet  Herat,  but  she  is  little  likely  to  provoke 
us  to  war  for  the  sake  of  adding  a  few  more 
thousand  unprofitable  square  miles  to  the  millions 
which  she  already  possesses  in  Central  Asia — 
totally  unprofitable,  from  a  military  point  of 
view,  because,  though  portions  of  the  Herat 
Valley  are  of  average  fertility,   they  are   far   too 

Government,  supported  by  the  voice  of  the  people,  insist 
that  Russia  shall  no  more  cross  the  Afghan  frontier  than 
that  her  troops  should  land  on  the  coast  of  Kent  or 
Sussex." — Sir  Lepel  Griffin. 


THE   ALTERNATIVES  121 

limited  in  extent  to  solve  the  problem  of  supply- 
ing the  needs  of  an  army  on  the  long  march  to 
India.  And  if,  as  some  Anglo-Indian  statesmen 
believe,  Russia's  restless  activity  on  one  side  of 
the  Hindu  Kush  is  prompted  by  fear  of  us,  as 
our  equally  restless  activity  on  the  other  side  is 
prompted  by  fear  of  her — is  it  not  clear  that  we 
could  take  no  step  better  calculated  to  allay  her 
anxiety,  and  to  induce  her  to  abstain  from  giving 
the  Amir  of  Afghanistan  any  just  cause  of 
offence,  than  our  own  withdrawal  from  the  borders 
of  his  kingdom  ? 

But  whether  Russia's  forward  policy  is,  or  is 
not,  dictated  by  fears  as  unreasoning  as  our  own, 
and  whether  her  eyes  are,  or  are  not,  capable  of 
being  opened  to  the  ruinous  folly  of  the  rivalry 
between  herself  and  us  in  regions  where  each 
country  is  safe  within  its  own  limits,  and  cannot, 
if  it  would,  overstep  the  other's  boundary,  matters 
little  ;  what  does  matter  is  that  Great  Britain 
should  abandon  and  disavow  her  own  Forward 
Policy,  and  should  reap  the  advantages  of  a  return 
to  wiser  counsels,  not  in  India  alone,  but  wherever 
her  influence  and  her  interests  extend,  that  is 
to  say,  in  every  quarter  of  the  globe. 


i22  THE   ALTERNATIVES 

The  first  of  these  advantages  will  be  the  power 
to  reduce  India's  ruinous  military  expenditure  ; 
the  second,  the  power  to  place  her  military 
system  on  a  safe  and  efficient  footing — safe  and 
efficient,  because  the  due  proportion  between 
her  British  and  Native  armed  forces  could  be  at 
once  restored  ;  because  the  Pathans  in  the  Native 
army  would  cease  to  be  dangerous,  when  free 
from  the  temptation  to  betray  us  to  their  own 
kith  and  kin ;  because  the  discontent  which 
service  out  of  India  and  in  unhealthy  localities  x 
never  fails  to  awaken  in  the  breasts  of  Hindu 
and  Mahomedan,  Sikh  and  Goorkha,  would  dis- 
appear from   that  army  when  such  service  would 

1  According  to  information  which  has  appeared,  from 
time  to  time,  in  the  Indian  papers,  our  forces  in  Behichistan, 
Chitral,  and  the  Malakand  Pass  are  all  abnormally  sickly, 
and  the  mortality  among  them  very  high.  In  connection 
with  this  point  it  is  well  to  recall  the  fact  that,  in  1S80,  Lord 
Roberts  advocated  "  withdrawing  all,  or  nearly  all,  the 
European  troops  from  Peshawur,  and  reducing  the  garrison 
to  the  lowest  possible  strength,"  on  the  ground  that  we 
could  only  ensure  "  a  healthy  and  serviceable  force,  fit  to 
take  the  field  at  any  period  of  the  year,"  by  keeping  our 
troops,  as  an  ordinary  thing,  under  favourable  conditions. 
"Only  persons,"  so  he  wrote,  "who  live  amongst  soldiers 
know  the  effect  of  quartering  them  in  unhealthy  places." 


THE    ALTERNATIVES  123 

no  longer  be  required  of  it,  except  under  excep- 
tional circumstances  and  for  short  periods  of 
time,1  and  because  when  we  ceased  squandering 
India's  money  on  useless  fortifications  and  rail- 
ways, unstable  as  water,  we  should  be  able  to 
increase  the  pay  of  our  Native  troops,2  and  to 
endow  every  Native  regiment  with  a  full  comple- 
ment of  British  officers.3 

1  "  The  condition,  welfare,  and  loyalty  of  the  Native 
Army  must  always  be  important  factors  in  determining 
questions  of  Indian  foreign  policy." — Memorandum  from 
Sir  Frederick  Roberts,  dated  Kabul,  29th  May,  1880. 

2  The  present  Commander-in-Chief  in  India,  Sir  George 
White,  has  secured  for  the  Native  Army  an  increase  of 
pay,  but  it  is  still  underpaid.  A  table  servant  in  India 
often  gets  a  higher  wage  than  a  Sepoy,  whose  contribu- 
tions to  regimental  funds  are  not  inconsiderable,  and  who, 
unlike  our  English  soldiers,  has  generally  a  wife  and 
family  to  maintain. 

3  "  The  greatest  want,  in  my  opinion,  and,  I  know,  in 
the  opinion  of  the  Commander-in-Chief,  is  an  increase  to 
the  number  of  British  officers  in  the  Indian  Army.  We 
have  endeavoured  to  meet  this  by  establishing  a  reserve 
of  officers,  but  the  attempt  has  been  a  failure.  .  .  .  Yet 
upon  the  outbreak  of  war  we  ought  to  increase  the  number 
of  European  officers  with  every  unit  of  the  Native  Army, 
and  we  should  require  some  hundreds  of  officers  for 
transport  duties  and  various  staff  appointments  in  the 
field.     Where  to  lay  hands  upon  these  officers  is  a  problem 


i24  THE  ALTERNATIVES 

The  third  advantage  to  be  reaped  from  a 
reversal  of  our  recent  Frontier  Policy  will  be  the 
opportunity  it  will  afford  us  of  ridding  ourselves 
of  that  gratuitously  created  danger — the  Imperial 
Service  Troops  ; x  and  of  bringing  moral  pressure 
to  bear  upon  the  Independent  Princes  to  induce 
them  to  cut  down  their  overgrown  and  utterly 
useless  armies.  When  we  can  say  with  conviction, 
no  danger  threatens  India,  from  without,  that 
our  troops  are  not  perfectly  well  able  to  meet, 
we  shall  be  justified  in  showing  the  displeasure 
with  which  we  view  the  continued  maintenance 
of  forces  that  have  no  legitimate  raison  d'itre,  and 
which  each  prince  keeps  up  to  be  ready  to  take 
advantage  of  any  failure  of  our  power.  I  need 
hardly  say  that  the  princes  whom  we  should  ask 
to   sacrifice   their   military   pride,   or   their    secret 

that  has  not  been  solved.  Should  the  finances  of  India 
improve,  I  earnestly  hope  that  this  question  will  not  be 
lost  sight  of." — Sir  Henry  Brackenbury,  late  Military 
Member  Viceroy's  Council. 

1  The  maintenance  of  the  Imperial  Service  Troops  costs 
annually  no  less  than  Rs.  5,784,910,  of  which  the  Indian 
Government  contributes  Rs.  200,000.  The  people  who 
have  to  provide  this  large  sum  are  already  more  heavily 
taxed  than  our  own  subjects. 


THE   ALTERNATIVES  125 

ambitions,  to  the  welfare  of  the  whole  Indian 
people — their  own  subjects  would  be  the  first 
to  profit  by  the  change — would,  as  civil  rulers, 
deserve  redoubled  consideration  at  our  hands, 
and  that  we  could  afford  to  leave  them  greater 
freedom  in  the  management  of  the  internal  affairs 
of  their  States,  when  relieved  ourselves  of  the 
fear  that  that  freedom  might  some  day  be  used 
to  jeopardise  the  peace  of  which  we  are  the 
guardians.  When  armies,  which  now  amount  to 
401,850  men  with  6,150  cannon,1  have  been  cut 
down  to  the  numbers  required  for  ceremonial 
purposes,  and  a  properly  organized  police  has 
taken  their  place  in  each  Native  State,  India 
might  reap  yet  another  advantage  in  the  shape 
of  a  reduction  of  her  own  army,  a  large  proportion 
of  which  is  at  present  engaged  in  keeping  a 
watch  upon  the  movements  of  these  independent 
forces.2     Relieved  from  that  duty,  150,000  Native 

1  "  Taking  both  regular  and  irregular  troops  together, 
the  estimated  total  strength  of  the  force  in  1891-92  was 
324,670  infantry,  77,180  cavalry,  and  6,150  guns." — Moral 
and  Material  Progress  in  India,  1891-92. 

2  The  following  troops  are  employed  in  watching  the 
armies  of  the  Independent  States  : — 14,000  British  Troops, 
18,000  Native  Troops,  and   114  guns. 


i26  THE    ALTERNATIVES 

troops  would  no  longer  be  required  to  guard  her 
borders  and  preserve  her  internal  peace,  and  a 
reduction  in  their  numbers  would  justify  the 
British  Government  in  proportionally  reducing 
those  of  their  British  comrades.1 

This  last  reduction  would  bring  with  it  a  fifth 
advantage,  since  by  reducing  the  home  charges, 
so  irksome  to  the  Indian  Government,  it  would 
make  an  appreciable  difference  to  it  in  the  matter 
of  exchange. 

Yet  another  advantage  would  be  the  ability  to 
re-occupy  strategical  points  of  vastly  greater 
importance  to  the  safety  of  India  and  of  India's 
Government  than  Quetta — points  which  of  late 
years  have  been  abandoned,  or  stinted  of  troops 
to  satisfy  the  demands  of  the  North- West  Frontier.2 

1  "  A  standing  army  which  is  larger  than  is  necessary 
for  home  requirements  will  be  a  tempting  and  almost  an 
irresistible  weapon  of  offence  beyond  the  border." — SIR 
Auckland  Colvin. 

8  "  In  Nepaul  we  have  to  deal  with  a  potential  danger 
of  more  than  ordinary  significance.  In  some  respects  it 
may  be  compared  to  Afghanistan  ;  but,  both  in  position 
as  regards  our  own  territory  and  in  union  among  them- 
selves, the  Nepaulese  must  be  considered  as  being  more 
formidable  than  the  Afghans. 

"  While   our    whole   military  system  has  been    adapted 


THE   ALTERNATIVES  127 

And  one  and  all  of  these  changes  would  lead 
directly  up  to  a  diminution  of  taxation  and  an 
increase  in  the  material  well-being  of  the  Indian 
people. 

Economy,  security,  prosperity — these  would  be 
India's  gain,  and  Great  Britain  would  share  these 
blessings  with  her  and  earn  yet  others  for  herself ; 
viz.,  in  India — an  assured  political  position,  resting 
on  the  contentment  of  the  great  rural  class,  which, 
in  that  country,  numbers  80  per  cent,  of  the 
entire  population,  entrenched  in  which  she  could 
face  with  tranquil  mind  the  great  problem  of 
how  to  reconcile  her  rule  with  the  satisfaction  of 
the  legitimate  aspirations  of  the  educated  native  ; 
at  Home — freedom  to  base  her  conduct  towards 
other   nations  on   her   principles,  rather   than   on 

to  insure  the  security  of  the  North-West  Frontier,  very 
slight  preparations  have  been  made  towards  repelling 
attack  from  Nepaul.  Should  the  Goorkhas  ever  produce  a 
great  leader,  without  the  prudence  or  the  other  distrac- 
tions of  Jung  Bahadur,  the  peril  would  assume  a  more 
tangible  form  than,  fortunately,  it  can  be  said  to  possess 
at  present. 

"  Then  it  would  be  recalled  that  the  Khatmandhu  Court 
had  striven  to  form  and  head  a  league  of  the  princes 
of  India  against  us  in  1839." — "The  Armies  of  the  Native 
States  of  India."     (Reprinted  from   The  Times,   1885.) 


i28  THE   ALTERNATIVES 

her  apprehensions.  Can  any  reasonable  man 
doubt  that  it  would  be  easier  and  safer  to  admit 
some  of  our  Indian  fellow-subjects  to  a  larger 
share  in  the  administration  of  their  country,  if 
we  had  broken  with  a  policy  by  which  all  are 
impoverished  and  many  exasperated  ?  or  question 
that  our  influence  in  Europe  would  be  doubled 
if  it  were  known  to  all  its  Governments  that  — 
having  ceased  to  strain  India's  resources  to  the 
uttermost  in  guarding  against  imaginary  dangers, 
and  having  strengthened  our  hold  upon  the  good- 
will of  her  people  and  the  loyalty  of  her  army — 
we  could  enter  into  war,  should  war  be  forced 
upon  us,  unhampered  by  the  fear  of  being 
suddenly  called  upon  to  meet  some  great  emer- 
gency,  10,000  miles  from  our  shores? 

There  are  men  who  will  talk  of  the  loss  of 
prestige  involved  in  the  step  I  counsel,  but  no 
nation's  prestige  can  suffer  from  an  accession  of 
strength  ;  and  if  ours  were  to  decline  temporarily, 
in  the  eyes  of  such  of  our  neighbours  as  should 
fail  to  see  what  we  gain  by  a  withdrawal  from 
Beluchistan  and  Waziristan,  from  Gilgit  and 
Chitral,  the  mistake  might  injure  them,  but  could 
not  injure  us.     Such  a  step   would,  indeed,  be  a 


THE  ALTERNATIVES  129 

confession  of  past  ignorance  and  folly,  but  then 
it  would,  at  the  same  time,  be  a  proclamation 
of  a  return  to  knowledge  and  common  sense. 
Certainly,  as  a  people,  we  have  not  been  in  the 
habit  of  living  by  the  applause  and  admiration 
of  our  neighbours,  but  by  the  robust  determina- 
tion to  go  our  own  way,  and  we  may  be  glad, 
in  this  case,  that  we  are  strong  enough  to  take 
it.  A  small  nation  may  sometimes  be  tied  and 
bound  by  its  own  mistakes  ;  a  great  nation  can 
break  through  them  and  live  them  down,  and 
that  in  an  incredibly  brief  time.  The  world's 
memory  is  of  the  shortest,  and  no  practical 
politician  troubles  his  head  about  yesterday's 
errors,  or  yesterday's  successes  j  he  has  enough 
to  do  in  grappling  with  the  errors,  and  ensuring 
the  successes  of  to-day.  Even  in  India,  the 
reckless  extravagance  of  the  last  decade  would 
soon  be  forgotten.  It  is  this  year's  taxation,  not 
last  year's,  which  galls  and  embitters  ;  the  road, 
the  bridge,  the  canal,  which  the  peasant  sees 
growing  under  his  eyes,  soon  efface  from  his 
mind  the  length  of  time  that  he  has  had  to  wait 
for  them.  Let  us  thank  God  for  this  happy  gift 
of  forgetfulness,  and  profit  by  it  to  regain,  as 
B.F.  K 


130  THE   ALTERNATIVES 

quickly  as  possible,  the  character  of  beneficent 
rulers,  which  we  once  possessed,  and  of  late  have 
forfeited. 

Other  critics  will  accuse  me  of  taking  no 
thought  for  British  trade,  of  which  it  is  our 
boast  that  it  everywhere  follows  the  British  flag. 
But  what  is  the  trade  of  the  78,000  square  miles 
which  the  Forward  Policy  has  added  to  the 
British  Empire,  compared  to  the  trade  which 
might  be  ours  were  India  rich  and  progressive, 
instead  of  poor  and  stationary  ?  Three  hundred 
millions  of  people  as  against,  perhaps,  one  and 
a  half  million  !  The  former  at  our  doors,  for  the 
sea  is  no  barrier  between  them  and  us  ;  the  latter, 
far  away  and  difficult  to  reach !  The  former 
inhabiting  a  land  to  which  irrigation  can  bring 
constantly  increasing  fertility  ;  the  latter  scattered 
over  mountains  and  deserts,  which  defy  the  power 
of  man  to  change  their  character  !  If  one  market 
is  to  be  sacrificed  to  the  other,  which,  I  ask,  is 
the  better  worth  preserving? 

But  there  is  no  occasion  to  choose  between 
them.  Trade  passes  safely  through  the  Khyber, 
with  the  consent  of  the  subsidised  Khyber  tribes 
and  under  the   protection   of  the    Khyber   levies, 


THE   ALTERNATIVES  131 

and  there  is  no  reason  why  the  same  inexpensive 
arrangements  should  not  keep  every  other  trade 
route  safe  and  open.  The  cost  would  be  a  trifle 
when  weighed  against  the  sums  now  wasted  on 
railways  and  roads,  which  crumble  under  the 
hands  of  their  builders. 

But  bad  as  our  present  position  on  this  frontier 
may  be,  it  is  safe  and  economical  compared  to 
that  which  must  eventually  succeed  it,  if  we 
persist  in  remaining  where  we  are.  I  know  I 
shall  be  told  that,  whatever  irresponsible  members 
of  the  Forward  school  may  write  about  pushing 
forward  our  posts  to  the  northern  side  of  the 
Hindu  Kush,  the  Indian  Government  has  no 
intention  of  encroaching  upon  the  dominions  of 
the  Amir.  I  do  not  question  the  sincerity  of  its 
desire  to  avoid  involving  India  in  a  third  Afghan 
War ;  what  I  contend  is  that  circumstances  must 
some  day,  may  any  day,  prove  too  strong  for 
its  intentions. 

So  long  as  the  deep  belt  of  territory  occupied 
by  the  Independent  Tribes  lay  between  Afghan- 
istan and  India,  it  was  possible  for  the  former 
country  to  be  torn  and  vexed  for  years  together 
by  internecine  strife,  without  that  strife's   giving 


1 32  THE  ALTERNATIVES 

rise  to  any  incident  that  called  for  our  inter- 
ference ;  and  when  one  prince,  stronger  than  the 
rest,  at  last  succeeded  in  establishing  himself  on 
the  throne  of  Kabul,  there  was  nothing  to  prevent 
our  entering  at  once  into  friendly  relations  with 
his  Government.  But  no  such  belt  now  separates 
the  two  States,  and  when  confusion  and  lawlessness 
next  reign  in  Afghanistan — as  reign  they  almost 
certainly  will  when  the  stern  hand,  which  now 
keeps  order  there,  is  withdrawn — violations  of 
our  Frontier  are  sure  to  occur.  These  will  have 
to  be  repressed  and  punished  ;  and  once  we  are 
brought  into  collision  with  any  section  of  the 
Afghan  people,  the  chances  are  small  of  our  being 
able  to  escape  taking  sides  with  one  or  other 
of  the  contending  factions ;  the  side  we  espoused 
would  become  the  anti-patriotic  side,  and  all  the 
difficulties  and  dangers  of  the  first  Afghan  War 
would  at  once  confront  us.  As,  under  existing  cir- 
cumstances, the  Russians  would  be  certain  to  lend 
their  aid  to  the  opposite  side,  those  difficulties  and 
dangers,  far  from  being  less  than  on  the  former 
occasion,  would  be  greatly  multiplied,  and  our 
expenditure  in  men  and  money  correspondingly 
increased.      Hut  where  is  the  money,  and  where 


THE   ALTERNATIVES  133 

are  the  men  to  come  from  ?  Has  not  the  present 
Secretary  of  State  for  India  admitted  that  there 
is  no  new  tax  which  the  Indian  Government  could 
impose,  no  possibility  of  extracting  more  revenue 
out  of  existing  taxes  ?  and  is  it  not  disgracefully 
true  that  the  richest  Provincial  Government,  that 
of  Bengal,  has  been  driven,  for  lack  of  funds,  to 
revert  to  such  vexatious  and  long  since  con- 
demned imposts  as  a  sliding  scale  of  taxation  on 
wedding  expenditure,  fees  on  religious  ceremonies, 
a  tax  on  village  carts,  and  tolls  upon  bridges  and 
roads  ?  As  for  the  men,  we  have  only  to  recall 
the  fact  that  eighteen  months  after  the  beginning 
of  the  last  Afghan  War  recruiting  had  practically 
ceased  in  India,1  and  to  realize  that  a  third 
Afghan  War  would  be  highly  unpopular,  from  the 
beginning,  with  an  army  which  has  not  yet  had 
time  to  forget  the  fatigues  and  hardships  of  the 
second — to  feel  sure  we  could  not  count  upon 
obtaining  all  we  should  need. 

But    short  of  money  and  short  of   men,  what 

1  "  In  case  of  a  prolonged  campaign  recruiting  might 
fail,  as  happened  in  the  last  Afghan  War." — Extract  de- 
spatch from  the  Government  of  India  to  the  Secretary  of 
State,  14th  August,  1885. 


i34  THE   ALTERNATIVES 

could  the  Indian  Government  do  but  adopt,  a  few 
years  hence,  under  compulsion,  the  very  course 
on  which  I  would  have  it  enter  freely  to-day  ? 
a  course  which,  safe  and  honourable  now,  would 
then  be  fraught  with  peril  and  shadowed  by 
disgrace. 

Intentions  are  worthless  when  circumstances  are 
beyond  men's  control,  and  that  circumstances  on 
the  North- West  Frontier  are  beyond  the  control 
of  the  Indian  Government  is  due  to  the  fact  that 
it  has  chosen  to  draw  that  frontier  where  nature 
never  intended  it  to  be.  Let  us  then  reclaim  our 
freedom  of  action  whilst  there  is  yet  time — 
freedom  to  do  our  full  duty  by  the  people  of 
India;  freedom  to  show  ourselves  firm,  but  kindly, 
neighbours  to  the  Independent  Tribes  ;  freedom 
to  keep  our  oft-repeated  promises  to  respect  the 
independence  and  integrity  of  Afghanistan  ;  free- 
dom to  smile  at  Russia's  threats,  whilst  removing 
her  legitimate  grounds  of  anxiety ;  freedom  to 
guide  our  policy  all  the  world  over  by  our  sense 
of  right  and  justice. 

It  is  no  untried  experiment  I  advocate,  no 
purely  visionary  gains  that  I  dare  to  foretell. 

That  experiment  has  already  been  put  to  the 


THE   ALTERNATIVES  135 

test  with  just  such  results   as  I    have  a  right  to 
expect  of  it  were  it  to  be  repeated  to-morrow. 

When  Lord  Ripon  arrived  in  India,  in  June, 
1880,  he  found  the  Anglo-Indian  army  occupying 
the  whole  of  Afghanistan.  Within  one  year  from 
that  date,  India,  except  for  the  retention  of  Quetta 
and  the  Pishin  Valley,  had  returned  to  her  old 
frontier,1  and  the  Government  of  India,  every 
member  of  which  loyally  supported  the  new  order 
of  things,  could  turn  its  attention  to  the  task  of 
undoing  the  evil  work  of  the  previous  administra- 
tion. In  1881-82,  82-83,  83-84,  the  military 
expenditure  was  brought  down  to  a  point  not 
greatly  exceeding  the  standard  prevailing  before 
the  war,  while  in  1884-85  it  was  Rs.  760,664  below 
that  standard  ;  and  yet  Sir  Auckland  Colvin,  the 
then  Financial  Member  of  Council,  was  able  to 
state  that  although  "  the  total  net  military  charges 
in  India  and  England  were  lower  than  they  had 
been  at  any  time  during  the  past  ten  years,  this 
had  been  effected  without  prejudice  to  efficiency, 
or  any  reduction  in  the  authorized  aggregate 
strength  of  the  army,  and  notwithstanding  that 
the  non-effective  and  superannuation  charges  have 
1  See  ;  India's  Scientific  Frontier,  p.  51. 


136  THE   ALTERNATIVES 

in  recent  years  largely  increased."  *  Careful  hus- 
banding of  the  Indian  finances  gave,  by  the  end 
of  the  financial  year  1883-84,  an  Imperial  surplus 
of  revenue  over  expenditure  of  Rs.  13,874,960  ;  but 
Lord  Ripon  did  not  wait  to  have  this  sum  in 
hand  before  entering  upon  important  fiscal  and 
domestic  reforms. 

The  salt  tax  was  largely  reduced,  and  the  whole 
of  the  import  duties,  with  the  exception  of  those 
on  wine,  spirits,  malt  liquor,  arms  and  ammuni- 
tion, were  abolished.  The  borrowing  of  money  for 
the  construction  of  railways  was  continued,  but 
under  strict  compliance  with  the  principle  laid 
down  by  Lord  Hartington,  that  no  new  line  zvas  to 
be  undertaken  unless  the  prospects  of  its  proving 
remunerative  were  good. 

Fresh  contracts  were  entered  into  with  the 
Provincial  Governments,  each  of  which  was  started 
on  its  new  career  with  a  substantial  sum  in  hand, 
whilst  all  were  encouraged,  in  their  turn,  to 
economize  and  develop  their  resources,  by  the 
assurance  that  the  Central  Government  would  not 
rob  them  of  the  fruit  of  their  self-denial  and 
energy. 

1  Indian  Financial  Statement  for  1885-86. 


THE  ALTERNATIVES  137 

Lastly,  the  famine  fund,  of  which  mention  has 
several  times  been  made  in  these  pages,  was 
established  on  a  permanent  footing,  not  only  to 
relieve  existing  distress,  but  to  carry  out  the 
public  works  by  which  the  danger  of  famine's 
occurring  could  gradually  be  lessened,  if  not 
entirely  overcome. 

And  what  were  the  political  results  of  the 
withdrawal  from  Afghanistan — the  Afghanistan  of 
the  Tribes,  as  well  as  the  Afghanistan  of  the 
Amir  ?  Did  it  produce  alarm  and  disaffection  in 
India  ?  Did  it  mortify  and  discontent  the  Native 
Army?  Did  it  lower  our  influence  with  the 
Independent  Tribes  and  encourage  them  to  raid 
upon  our  territory?  Did  it  weaken  us  in  our 
relations  to  our  European  neighbours  ? 

The  answer  to  every  one  of  these  questions  is 
an  emphatic — No.  The  Indian  people,  relieved 
from  the  strain  of  war,  went  about  its  ordinary 
occupations  with  renewed  activity  and  cheerful- 
ness. The  Native  Army  rejoiced  to  find  itself 
once  more  at  home.  The  Independent  Tribes 
respected  our  border  so  scrupulously  that,  during 
the  whole  of  Lord  Ripon's  administration,  not  a 
single  punitive  expedition  had  to  be  sent  against 


138  THE   ALTERNATIVES 

them,  and  the  British  Government  could  embark 
on  the  Egyptian  and  Soudan  campaigns  without 
any  fear  of  being  called  upon  to  strengthen  our 
forces  in  India.  On  the  contrary,  the  Indian 
Government  was  able  to  lend  troops  to  Great 
Britain,  and  even  to  contribute  Rs.  6,820,000  to  the 
expenses  of  the  Egyptian  War,  and  this  without 
having  to  impose  fresh  burdens  on  its  subjects. 

The  good  conduct  of  the  tribes  is,  of  course, 
susceptible  of  the  explanation  that  in  the  Afghan 
War  we  had  so  broken  and  cowed  them, 
that  they  dared  not  provoke  us  afresh  ;  but 
looking  to  all  the  facts  of  the  Frontier  situation 
both  then  and  since,  it  seems  attributable,  rather, 
to  our  return  to  a  position  in  which  experience 
had  long  taught  them  that  they  could  effect 
nothing  against  us,  and  to  Lord  Ripon's  honour- 
able abstention  from  all  action  that  could  alarm, 
or  trouble  them. 

But  if  four  short  years,  under  the  guidance  of 
men  whose  hearts  were  set  upon  making  British 
rule  in  India  strong  in  the  only  durable  way, 
sufficed  to  undo  all  the  harm  that  had  been 
wrought  during  those  other  four  years,  in  which 
the  Forward  Policy   had    been   in  the   ascendant, 


THE   ALTERNATIVES  139 

(except,  indeed,  to  give  back  the  lives  and  money 
which  had  been  thrown  away) — what  might  not 
the  eleven  years,  which  have  since  elapsed,  have 
done  to  add  to  India's  prosperity  and  contentment, 
had  the  Government  continued  to  move  forward  in 
the  path  of  peace,  economy,  and  quiet  confidence 
in  its  own   strength  ? 

But,  unfortunately,  with  the  expiration  of  Lord 
Ripon's  term  of  office,  our  Frontier  Policy  once 
more  suffered  reversal.  The  Penjdeh  incident, 
which  occurred  shortly  after  Lord  Dufferin's  ar- 
rival in  India,  was  the  immediate  cause  of  the 
change;  but  that  incident  in  the  hands  of  men  free 
from  illusions  with  regard  to  Russia's  power  to 
harm  us,  and  strong  to  resist  the  ambitious  prompt- 
ings of  the  military  clique  to  whose  influence  the 
Government  of  India  is  ceaselessly  exposed,  would 
never  have  been  exalted  into  the  rank  of  an  event 
of  first-class  importance.  As  things  were,  the 
scare  which  it  excited  could  hardly  have  been 
greater  if,  instead  of  a  skirmish  between  Russians 
and  Afghans,  600  miles  from  our  most  advanced 
post,  the  Russians  had  been  knocking  at  the  gates 
of  Peshawur. 

Rs.  22,880,710  of  India's   money  disappeared  in 


i4o  THE  ALTERNATIVES 

war  preparations  alone  before  that  scare  wore  itself 
out.  Wear  itself  out  it  did,  in  the  end,  but  it  left 
behind  a  spirit  which  has  never  since  ceased  to 
dominate  Indian  affairs,  and  to  which  are  attri- 
butable all  the  ills  set  forth  in  the  second  chapter 
of  my  previous  volume,  and  the  first  three  chap- 
ters of  this  one.  More  quickly  than  good  had 
effaced  evil,  evil,  once  more  triumphant,  wiped 
out  good. 

It  seems  to  me,  that  the  one  weak  point  in  Lord 
Ripon's  Frontier  Policy  is  responsible  for  this  dis- 
astrous change  of  front.  Had  we  fallen  back  at  the 
southern  extremity  of  the  North- West  Frontier  as 
completely  as  we  fell  back  on  its  northern  ex- 
tremity, a  fresh  advance,  beginning  ab  ovo,  would 
have  presented  itself  to  the  Government  of  India 
and  to  public  opinion,  both  there  and  here,  in  its 
full  magnitude,  and  would  have  met  with  wide 
discussion  and  weighty  opposition.  But  Quetta 
and      Pishin x     retained,    made     that     "  insidious 

1  Quetta,  though  not  Afghan  territory,  had  been  occupied 
by  Lord  Lytton  as  a  first  step  towards  the  invasion  of 
Afghanistan  ;  and  his  successor  might  have  well  included 
its  abandonment  in  the  settlement  by  which  he  sought  to 
restore  good  feeling  between  the  Afghans  and  ourselves. 
As  regards    Pishin,  many  eminent  statesmen  and  soldiers 


THE   ALTERNATIVES  141 

method  of  creeping  over  the  country  like  a  mist," 
so  indignantly  repudiated  by  Sir  William  Mans- 
field, possible  and  easy. 

Month  by  month,  our  posts  moved  farther  away 
from  their  supports  ;  month  by  month,  the  expense 
of  keeping  them  supplied  with  food  and  munitions 
of  war  grew  greater ;  month  by  month,  the  mili- 
tary frontier  railways  swallowed  up  lakhs  of  rupees 
and  holocausts  of  lives — and  yet,  outside  a  narrow 
military  and  civil  official  circle,  no  one  knew  what 
was  going  on  ;  and  when  the  financial  difficulties, 
which  were  the  inevitable  fruit  of  such  reckless 
expenditure,  became  too  glaring  for  concealment, 
the  fall  in  exchange  came  to  the  help  of  the 
military  authorities  as  a  scapegoat  on  whose  back 
to  lay  the  burden  of  their  own  sins. 

Therefore  it  is  that  I  put  no  faith  in  any  par- 
tial retirement.  Even  if  it  were  not  palpably  as 
wise  a  thing  "  to  let  the  web  of  difficulties  "  spread 
itself  for  our  enemies  to  the  mouth  of  the  Bolan 
as  to  the  mouth  of  the  Khyber  ;  even  if  Quetta 
and  its  communications  were  not  a  financial  quick- 
sand in  which  millions  of  rupees  must  annually 

were  in  favour  of  giving  it  back  to  the  Amir — Lord  Wolseley 
for  one. 


142  THE   ALTERNATIVES 

disappear  to  no  purpose — I  should  still  urge  the 
abandonment  of  that  fortress,  on  the  ground  that 
we  should  never  be  safe  against  the  temptation  to 
use  it  as  a  base  whence  to  renew  our  conquests.  I 
am  not  blind  to  the  fact  that  there  are  at  Ouetta 
great  works,  both  military  and  civil,  the  relinquish- 
ment, or  destruction  of  which  would  appear  to 
entail  immense  loss  on  the  State  which  created 
them  ;  but,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  works  which  serve 
no  good  end,  by  which  India  is  not,  and  never 
will  be,  the  richer,  or  the  safer,  are  in  themselves 
a  dead  loss  to  that  State,  a  loss  which  the  cost  of 
maintaining  them  renders  heavier  year  by  year ; 
and  the  charge  of  culpable  waste  must  be  brought, 
not  against  those  who  would  abandon,  but 
against  those  who  would  retain  them. 

I  have  said  that  the  memory  of  nations  is  short, 
and  that  we  may  well  be  thankful  that  this  is  the 
case ;  but  that  faculty  of  forgetfulness  has  its  bad 
as  well  as  its  good  side,  and  the  British  Public, 
distracted  by  a  thousand  contending  interests  and 
anxieties,  must,  of  necessity,  dismiss  one  subject 
from  its  mind  to  make  room  for  another.  Even 
if  I  could  convert  the  entire  Press  and  People  of 
England    to   my  views    to-day,  their  hold  on  the 


THE   ALTERNATIVES  143 

facts  and  reasonings  by  which  that  conversion 
would  have  been  effected,  would  be  so  weak  that, 
a  very  few  years  hence,  they  would  be  unable  to 
recall  them,  and  timid  or  ambitious  men  might 
once  again  appeal,  not  in  vain,  to  their  fears,  or 
their  patriotism,  for  leave  to  plunge  India  back 
into  the  slough  of  despond  from  which  she  had 
escaped. 

My  Policy,  therefore,  is  "  Thorough."  Of  all  our 
useless  possessions  let  us  keep  not  a  single  square 
mile  to  tempt  us  to  our  hurt  ;  but  resolutely  shut- 
ting the  book  of  aggression  and  extravagance,  let 
us  open  that  of  internal  development  and  economy. 
And  let  this  be  done,  not  in  secret,  but  openly, 
that  all  the  world  may  know  that  we  have  re- 
turned to  our  right  mind,  and  that  in  regaining 
wisdom  we  have  bought  back  strength. 


Butler  &  Tanner,  The  Sehvood  Printing  Works,  Frome,  and  London. 


©pinions  of  tbe  {press. 


CAN   RUSSIA   INVADE   INDIA? 

BY 

Colonel  H.  B.  Hanna. 

Saturday  Review. — "  We  recommend  those  who  wish  to  make 
a  closer  acquaintance  with  the  Indian  frontier  problem  to  read  a 
book  by  Colonel  H.  B.  Hanna,  Can  Russia  Invade  India  ?  " 

Tablet. — "We  recommend  this  book  to  all  who  are  scared  by 
the  bugbear  of  Russian  advance  in  Central  Asia.  .  .  .  Colonel 
Hanna's  powerful  pamphlet  will  remain  as  a  powerful  contribution 
to  an  important  subject  from  one  whose  military  knowledge  and 
personal  experience  give  him  a  right  to  be  heard  as  an  expert." 

Westminster  Gazette. — "An  excellent  little  book  likely  to  be 
extremely  useful.  All  who  can  read  words  of  two  or  more  syllables, 
and  all  free  libraries  and  political  clubs,  should  have  Can  Russia 
Invade  India?  on  their  shelves." 

The  Speaker. — "  Since  the  military  alarmist,  in  one  form  or 
another,  is  ever  with  us,  the  appeal  to  cool  judgment  and  common 
sense  is  never  superfluous." 

Broad  Arro7t>. — "  He  writes  with  an  intimate  topographical 
knowledge  of  his  theme,  and  we  are  impressed  with  a  consciousness 
that  the  financial  condition  of  India  imperatively  forbids  an  adven- 
turous policy  which  cannot  be  justified  by  a  clear  demonstration 
that  he  is  wrong." 

Asiatic  Quarterly  Review. — "  Our  gallant  author's  painstaking 
book  should  be  read  by  all  who  have  at  heart  the  maintenance  of 
the  Empire  ;  for  it  shows  admirably  at  least  one  side  of  the  vital 
question,  which  should  be  studied  from  each  of  its  several  points 
of  view." 

Manchester  Guardian. —  "Colonel  Hanna,  a  soldier  of  experience 
and  distinction,  with  a  personal  knowledge  of  the  North-West 
Frontier,  takes  one  by  one  the  routes  by  which  it  has  been  thought 

144 


possible  that  India  might  be  attacked  on  that  side,  and  works  out 
carefully  the  time  that  would  be  required  for  Russian  troops  to  reach 
the  British  posts  on,  or  near  the  Indus,  the  force  that  would  be 
necessary  to  make  a  successful  attack  possible,  and  the  supplies 
that  would  be  needed  to  bring  it  alive  through  the  deserts  beyond 
our  old  frontier.  The  result  is  a  demonstration  unanswerable,  as 
far  as  we  can  now  see,  of  the  absolute  impracticability  of  such  an 
enterprise." 

Times  of  India. — "  Colonel  H.  B.  Hanna,  Bengal  Staff  Corps, 
gives  a  very  lucid  and  unbiassed  statement  of  the  problem  and  the 
reasons  which  convince  him  that,  by  whatever  political  move  Russia 
may  seek  to  embarrass  us  in  Central  Asia,  the  actual  invasion  of 
India  is  known  by  the  Russian  Government  to  be  now  almost 
impossible.  With  these  conclusions  we  are  in  entire  sympathy. 
.  The  impossible  dies  hard,  as  we  all  know,  but  here  is  a 
task  which  is  almost  outside  the  realms  of  the  thinkable." 

Indian  Spectator. — "With  regard  to  one  great  question  of  the 
day — the  wasting  of  India's  reserves  beyond  her  frontiers — there  is 
a  small  book  that  should  be  mentioned,  by  .  .  .  Colonel. H. 
B.  Hanna,  entitled  Can  Russia  Invade  India  ?  For  those  who 
have  any  capacity  to  understand  physical  geography  and  the  exi- 
gencies of  military  supply  and  transport  it  shows  that  Russia  can't, 
could  not,  if  she  would." 

ARCHIBALD   CONSTABLE   &   CO., 
2,  Whitehall  Gardens,  S.W. 

Sold  by  all  Booksellers. 


B.F. 


©pinions  of  tbe  press. 


INDIA'S  SCIENTIFIC    FRONTIER. 
WHERE    IS    IT?    WHAT    IS    IT? 

BY 

COLONFX  H.    B.    Hanna. 

Manchester  Guardian. — "Colonel  Hanna  has  given  in  a  com- 
paratively small  space  and  with  admirable  clearness  such  a  con- 
spectus of  recent  frontier  policy  in  India  as  can  hardly  be  found 
elsewhere,  and  such  a  demonstration  of  its  real  meaning  and  too 
probable  consequences  as  should  have  an  effect,  even  at  this 
eleventh  hour,  on  every  mind  not  obstinately  closed  against  con- 
viction." 

Saturday  Review. — "  Colonel  Hanna  is  well  known  in  India, 
where  he  saw  much  service  and  acquired  the  reputation  of  an  active 
and  sagacious  officer.  He  is  personally  acquainted  with  the  charac- 
ter and  quality  of  the  several  classes  from  which  our  native  Indian 
army  is  recruited.  He  has  campaigned  beyond  the  frontier,  and 
took  part  in  the  last  Kabul  war.  He  writes  with  competent  know- 
ledge of  his  subject,  and  is  entitled,  therefore,  to  impartial  hearing." 

Scotsman.  —  "Colonel  Hanna's  new  tract  on  India's  Scientific 
Frontier  is  a  piece  of  trenchant  criticism,  and  a  most  powerful 
protest  against  the  forward  policy  now  in  the  ascendant  on  our 
Indian  frontier.  .  .  .  Looked  at  from  a  purely  literary  point 
of  view,  this  is  a  powerfully  written  pamphlet,  vigorous  in  style, 
and  strong  both  in  facts  and  arguments." 

Liberal. — "  We  would  once  more  call  attention  to  the  great 
value  of  the  series  called  'Indian  Problems,'  which  Colonel  H.  B. 
Hanna  is  at  present  publishing.  To  all  desirous  of  gaining  an 
acquaintance  with  the  pros  and  cons  of  our  Indian  frontier  question 
no  authorities  can  be  named  better  than  these  little  brochures. 
They  are  the  most  authoritative  pronouncements  on  the  subject  we 
yet  have  had.  They  trace  the  progress  of  the  frontier  question  from 
1876  until  the  present  day,  and  collect  a  large  amount  of  most 
interesting   and   valuable   matter   not   otherwise   easily  accessible. 

146 


Colonel  Hanna  is  an  impartial  controversialist.  Though  one  can 
see  which  way  his  sympathies  turn,  he  is  as  ready  to  praise  Con- 
servative statesmanship  when  it  is  deserving  of  praise  as  he  is  to 
reflect  on  Liberal  blunders  when  they  merit  animadversion.  The 
little  books  form  the  best  handbooks  of  their  kind  on  the  Indian 
frontier  question." 

Bombay  Gazette. — "  Colonel  Hanna  has  rendered  even  a  greater 
service  to  his  countrymen  than  by  his  previous  pamphlet,  Can 
Russia  Invade  India  ?  ...  In  his  second  pamphlet  Colonel 
Hanna  points  out  how  hopeless  have  been  the  struggles  and  how 
endless  the  expenditure  occasioned  us  by  the  pursuit  of  a  Scientific 
Frontier,  which,  dancing  about  before  our  eyes  like  a  will-of-the- 
wisp,  has  led  us  now  to  Kandahar,  now  to  Chitral,  and  again  to 
Kurram  and  Waziristan.  There  is  reason  to  fear  that  it  will  end 
by  leading  us  into  difficulties  and  dangers  from  which  we  shall  find 
it  more  and  more  impossible  to  extricate  ourselves,  unless  reason 
steps  forward  and  puts  an  end  to  the  chase." 

Guardian. — "  This  is  a  powerful  argument  in  favour  of  the 
Lawrence  policy.  .  .  .  It  is  always  useful  to  have  both  sides 
of  a  disputable  position  clearly  and  forcibly  stated,  and  we  probably 
have  in  this  book  the  very  strongest  case  that  can  be  made  out  for 
the  policy  of  '  masterly  inactivity.'  " 

The  Champion. — "  A  book  worth  reading.  .  .  .  As  a  general 
rule,  books  written  by  military  men  upon  matters  of  state-craft  are  of 
little  importance.  Soldiers  seem  unable  to  take  a  broad  view  of 
anything  outside  their  own  profession,  and,  consequently,  not  much 
heed  is  taken  of  their  political  ideas.  It  is,  therefore,  with  pleasur- 
able surprise  that  we  welcome  the  literary  work  of  Colonel  H.  B. 
Hanna." 

Literary  World. — "  The  forward  policy  is  in  the  ascendant  for 
the  present,  the  Government  in  power  having  pronounced  against 
the  decision  of  Lord  Rosebery's  Cabinet  to  withdraw  entirely  from 
Chitral.  But  perhaps  a  day  will  come  when  Colonel  Hanna's 
vaticinations  of  disaster  will  be  justified  by  events." 

Christian  World. — "This  is  an  exhaustive  and  very  able  ex- 
amination of  the  whole  question." 

Glasgow  Herald. — "Colonel  Hanna's  book  is  a  valuable  and 
clearly  written  repertory  of  facts,  and  forms  a  useful  addition  to 
a  reference  library.  .  .  .  Colonel  Hanna  states  his  views  with 
great  clearness  and  ability." 

ARCHIBALD   CONSTABLE  &   CO., 
2,  Whitehall  Gardens,  S.W. 

Sold  by  all  Booksellers. 


147 


CONSTABLE'S 

Hand  Atlas  of  India 

A  New  Series  of  Sixty  Maps  and  Plans 

prepared    from    Ordnance   and    other   Surveys 

under  the  direction  of 

J.  G.  BARTHOLOMEW,  F.R.G.S., 

F.R.S.E.,  &c. 


In  half  morocco,  or  full  bound  cloth,  gilt  top,   14^. 


This  Atlas  is  the  first  publication  of  its  kind,  and  for 
tourists  and  travellers  generally  it  will  be  found  particularly 
useful.  There  are  Twenty-two  Plans  of  the  principal  towns 
of  our  Indian  Empire,  based  on  the  most  recent  surveys, 
and  officially  revised  to  date  in  India. 

The  Topographical  Section  Maps  are  an  accurate  reduc- 
tion of  the  Survey  of  India,  and  contain  all  the  places 
described  in  Sir  W.  W.  Hunter's  "  Gazetteer  of  India," 
according  to  his  spelling. 

The  Military,  Railway,  Telegraph,  and  Mission  Station 
Maps  are  designed  to  meet  the  requirements  of  the  Military 
and  Civil  Service,  also  missionaries  and  business  men  who 
at  present  have  no  means  of  obtaining  the  information  they 
require  in  a  handy  form. 

The  index  contains  upwards  of  ten  thousand  names,  and 
will  be  found  more  complete  than  any  yet  attempted  on  a 
similar  scale. 

Further  to  increase  the  utility  of  the  work  as  a  reference 
volume,  an  abstract  of  the  1891  Census  has  been  added. 


"  It  is  tolerably  safe  to  predict  that  no  sensible  traveller  will  go  to 
India  in  future  without  providing  himself  with  'Constable's  Hand  Atlas 
of  India.'  Nothing  half  so  useful  has  been  done  for  many  years  to  help 
both  the  traveller  in  India  and  the  student  at  home.  '  Constable's  Hand 
Atlas  '  is  a  pleasure  to  hold  and  to  turn  over." — Athenceum. 


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